When the output is a service rather than a good, it sometimes is difficult to quantify this service. Furthermore, the quality of a service is often as important (if not more important) than the quantity. And in many cases, labor time spent with a customer is directly related to this quality of service. If this is the case, then the quantity and quality of a person’s efforts may be in conflict with each other.
In the field of education, in obvious quantitative measure of teacher productivity would be number of students in a class. But is there a point at which the increase in class size interferes with learning? Moreover, what about such qualitative measures as the performance of the students in the subject being taught?
So in your initial post devise a method that accurately measures the productivity of a college professor teaching economics. Hopefully, the measure you will come up with will include some sort of quality measure as well. This measure you devise will be used to decide whether to renew faculty contracts, pay levels, promotions and pay raises, so be careful, my future lies in your hands.