Using data envelopment analysis to measure the efficiency of non-profit organizations: A critical evaluation

This study examines the potential effects of variable set expansion and data variations upon the efficiency scores generated using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model. It was found that variable set expansion (either through disaggregation of existing variables or addition of new factors) should produce an upward trend in efficiency scores. In addition, ample opportunity exists for ‘decision-making units’ to increase their efficiency scores through manipulation of reported data. In real-world applications of DEA, these problems must be resolved as much as possible (e.g. increased audit of data) in order to improve DEA's practical usefulness and reliability.     

Production frontier estimation to measure efficiency: A critical evaluation in light of data envelopment analysis

The ranking and measurement of efficiency of decision-making units by two methods—data envelopment analysis and frontier production function—may not always lead to identical results. In this framework we attempt here a critical evaluation of the frontier production function theory in terms of theoretical and empirical implications. It is shown that under certain conditions the two approaches to effciency measurement may lead to identical results.     

Productive efficiency of English football teams—a data envelopment analysis approach

This paper investigates how close to their potential English Premier League Clubs play. Using a deterministic Data Envelopment Analysis Approach, the productive efficiency of 20 teams in the 2000/2001 season is measured and weaknesses of individual teams are disclosed. The sensitivity of results is analyzed with regard to different model specifications and variable combinations. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A data envelopment analysis of gas utilities' efficiency

This study examines the Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978 and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) policies that culminated in Order 636 in 1992. The regulatory environment in which natural gas distribution utilities operate was altered. FERC policies forced local gas distribution utilities into an increasingly competitive environment. Restructuring of the industry may affect economic efficiency. Data Envelopment Analysis is used to examine the economic efficiency of gas distributors during 1975–94. Federal policy appears to lead to a reduction in scale due to restructuring and more competition. Reduced scale economies have not altered the economic efficiency of the utilities.     

Using data envelopment analysis to evaluate efficiency in the economic performance of Chinese cities

This paper studies the use of DEA (data envelopment analysis) as a tool for possible use in evaluating and planning the economic performance of China's cities (28 in all) which play a critical role in the government's program of economic development. DEA promises advantages which include the absence of any need for the assignment of weights on an a priori basis (to reflect the supposed relative importance of various outputs or inputs) when evaluating technical efficiency. It is also unnecessary to explicitly specify underlying functions that are intended to prescribe the analytical form of the relations between inputs and outputs. Finally, as is illustrated in the paper, DEA can be used to identify sources, and estimate amounts of inefficiencies in each city's performance as well as to identify returns-to-scale possibilities in ways that seem well-suited to the mixture of centralized and decentralized planning and performance that China is currently trying to use.     

Distance optimization approach to ratio-form efficiency measures in data envelopment analysis

This paper examines the development pattern of the DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) research field using Social Network Analysis. Nine stylized facts are verified: it is shown that the distribution of research performance is highly skewed, satisfying a power law, and that collaborative research activity is concentrated achieving higher performance. Moreover, economics and OR (operations research)/MS (management science) groups developed without collaboration until the 1980s; however, the merger of the two groups began in 1994 with the collaboration of frontier researchers. Now the two groups have merged significantly, but they are still identifiable. Finally, research hubs and the emergence of new groups are examined. Nine stylized facts show that DEA has developed with unique attributes. Although it shares common characteristics with other academic fields, including a highly skewed distribution of publications and expansion of the network over time, the DEA field has had a pattern of development that is different from those of other academic fields. Independent development and interrelated evolution between economics and OR/MS contributed to the exchange of knowledge of these two separate fields.     

A two-stage double-bootstrap data envelopment analysis of efficiency differences of New Zealand secondary schools

We conduct a two-stage (DEA and regression) analysis of the efficiency of New Zealand secondary schools. Unlike previous applications of two-stage semi-parametric modelling of the school “production process”, we use Simar and Wilson’s double bootstrap procedure, which permits valid inference in the presence of unknown serial correlation in the efficiency scores. We are therefore able to draw robust conclusions about a system that has undergone extensive reforms with respect to ideas high on the educational agenda such as decentralised school management and parental choice. Most importantly, we find that school type affects school efficiency and so too does teacher quality.     

Decomposition of technical efficiency under fixed proportion technologies: an application of data envelopment analysis

In this paper, we extend the four-component stochastic frontier model to allow for global spatial dependence via the endogenous spatial autoregressive variable. Our proposed model is more general than the model considered by (Glass et al., 2016) in the sense that we include a random effect as well as a permanent efficiency component. With the spatial autoregressive specification, our model is able to capture the asymmetric efficiency spillovers and also decompose the persistent/transient inefficiencies into direct and indirect efficiencies. Moreover, we also investigate the marginal effects of the exogenous variables on the persistent/transient efficiency. We suggest a maximum simulated likelihood method to estimate the frontier parameters of the model, and we predict the efficiencies using the simulated estimator. Monte Carlo simulations reveal that the suggested estimator performs well in finite samples. An empirical application is considered to illustrate the usefulness of our proposed model and method.

     

基于数据包络分析法的涉农金融机构经营效率分析

文章以2012年246家涉农金融机构的4项投入因素(员工人数、总利息支出、非利息费用与净值)与3项产出因素(贷款收入、非贷款收入与逾期贷款比率)为研究对象,利用非预期因素数据包络分析法,分析涉农金融机构经营效率的评估,并提出达到相对有效率应改善的方向。研究发现:舍弃逾期贷款比率与不舍弃逾期贷款比率的产出导向BCC模型间,占总体样本的8.54%,显现两种方法有其差异性。这是因为涉农金融逾期贷款比率愈高,需要付出更多的人力去催讨与处理抵押品的损失,皆会影响涉农金融机构经营效率。此外,投入或产出项需要调整的涉农金融机构占80.89%。涉农金融机构经营效率低下的主要原因是资源分配不当,如何降低经营成本与开拓业务实属当务之急。     

Evaluating cost efficiency and returns to scale in the Life Insurance Corporation of India using data envelopment analysis

This paper applies a new variant of data envelopment analysis model to examine the performance of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India. The findings show a significant heterogeneity in the cost efficiency scores over the course of 19 years. A decline in performance after 1994-1995 can be taken as evidence of increasing allocative inefficiencies arising from the huge initial fixed cost undertaken by LIC in modernizing its operations. A significant increase in cost efficiency in 2000-2001 is, however, cause for optimism that LIC may now be realizing a benefit from such modernization. This will stand them in good stead in terms of future competition. Results from a sensitivity analysis are in broad agreement with the main findings of this study.     

An application of data envelopment analysis to evaluate the efficiency level of the operational cost of Brazilian electricity distribution utilities

This paper shows efficiency indices for 60 Brazilian electricity distribution utilities. The efficiency scores are gauged by three DEA models. For both models, these quantities are evaluated under different contexts. One treats with respect to the regulator perspective. The others examine an alternative approach based on cluster analysis and restrictions on factor weights. It is worth pointing out that these developments can reduce the information asymmetry and improve the regulator's skill to compare the performance of the utilities, a fundamental in incentive regulation schemes.     

The relative efficiency of public versus private municipal bus firms: An application of data envelopment analysis

This article has employed the data envelopment analysis method to evaluate the efficiency of the five bus firms in Taipei city. When vehicle kilometers (revenue or the measure combining vehicle kilometers, revenue and the number of traffic trips on routes) was used as the output measure, it concluded that the publicly owned Taipei Municipal Bus had increased (not increased) its technical efficiency after the government liberalized the urban bus market. This article also found that in both the one output (vehicle kilometers) and three outputs cases, Taipei Municipal Bus had, on an average, lower efficiency scores than the private firms, and that while each firm usually employed a linear production technology for several, consecutive years the private firms were more flexible in adopting different technologies.     

Exploring competition efficiency of automobile brands: An extensional data envelopment analysis-metafrontier framework

This study integrates metafrontier with bootstrapping to investigate automobile vehicle efficiency. The results are as follows: (1) general cars exhibited the most favorable performance in terms of price, costs, and mileage. (2) Metafrontier efficiency was the highest for general cars, which may be because this automobile type has the highest prevalence. Sports cars had the most favorable group frontier. (3) General cars had the most favorable performance in terms of miles-per-gallon. The conclusions could enhance consumers' green cognition and serve as a reference in purchase decision-making; they can provide manufacturers with directions regarding future product designs to mitigate technology gaps.     

Measurement of technical efficiency in farrow-to-finish swine production using multi-activity network data envelopment analysis: evidence from Taiwan

This study aims to propose a dynamic multi-activity network data development analysis (DMNDEA) model to measure the technical efficiency of farrow-to-finish swine production in Taiwan. Production phases are explicitly divided into two activities; namely, the breed-to-farrow phase and the wean-to-finish phase. By using this model, the problem of shared inputs and dynamic intermediates among activities that characterize pig production are taken into account in an integrated framework, simultaneously with the consideration of non-zero slack, allowing us to examine aspects of production in a more comprehensive and factual manner. For the empirical results based on sample data from 2006 to 2007, it is shown that the overall technical inefficiencies obtained from DMNDEA are not obviously different from those obtained using a traditional one-stage model. However, the DMNDEA results explicitly show us that the sources of inefficiency for each farm are different. Furthermore, second-stage bootstrapping regression results reveal that the determinants of efficiency for each production phase are not the same, indicating the need to identify the influential factors for each production phase separately.     

The efficient use of enterprise information for strategic advantage: A data envelopment analysis

A majority of manufacturers make use of some form of enterprise systems (ES), yet on average, the financial impact of ES adoption is essentially neutral. We propose that in an ES environment of easy information access, competitive success depends, in part, on the policies regulating enterprise information use. To explore this proposition, we examine the efficient use of different types of enterprise information in the realization of strategic performance. Efficient firms will devote fewer resources to information use to achieve the same strategic performance as less efficient firms.     

Using data envelopment analysis to quantify ILO objectives and identify policies conducive to decent work in a globalizing world

The International Labor Office, an arm of the UN based in Geneva, has as its goal the promotion of opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity. Since 1999, the ILO has conducted a series of studies of decent work. In 2001, the organization posed the global challenge of reducing the decent work deficit as measured by an employment gap, rights gap, a social protection gap, and a social dialogue gap. Using standard economic terms, “decent work” may be seen as an efficiency point along a generalized input-output function, dependent upon variables of both economic performance and economic and social policy. The decent work deficit of a given country (if any) is then obtained as the difference between an observed point and its projection on the efficiency frontier. Using data envelopment analysis (DEA), we fit a piecewise linear frontier to observations for 61 countries from all continents. Importantly, 27 of these countries lie on the decent work frontier; the remaining ones reveal conditions of decent work deficit. The possibilities of reducing such deficits by appropriate control of policy variables are discussed.     

A cautionary note on methods of comparing programmatic efficiency between two or more groups of DMUs in data envelopment analysis

In some applications of data envelopment analysis (DEA) there may be doubt as to whether all the DMUs form a single group with a common efficiency distribution. The Mann–Whitney rank statistic has been used to evaluate if two groups of DMUs come from a common efficiency distribution under the assumption of them sharing a common frontier and to test if the two groups have a common frontier. These procedures have subsequently been extended using the Kruskal–Wallis rank statistic to consider more than two groups. This technical note identifies problems with the second of these applications of both the Mann–Whitney and Kruskal–Wallis rank statistics. It also considers possible alternative methods of testing if groups have a common frontier, and the difficulties of disaggregating managerial and programmatic efficiency within a non-parametric framework.      

Some extensions of techniques to handle non-discretionary factors in data envelopment analysis

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) assumes, in most cases, that all inputs and outputs are controlled by the Decision Making Unit (DMU). Inputs and/or outputs that do not conform to this assumption are denoted in DEA asnon-discretionary (ND) factors. Banker and Morey [1986] formulated several variants of DEA models which incorporated ND with ordinary factors. This article extends the Banker and Morey approach for treating nondiscretionary factors in two ways. First, the model is extended to allow for thesimultaneous presence of ND factors in both the input and the output sets. Second, a generalization is offered which, for the first time, enables a quantitative evaluation ofpartially controlled factors. A numerical example is given to illustrate the different models.The editor for this paper was Wade D. Cook.