DEA: A role in policy exploration?

Data Envelopment Analysis is probably seen by many practitioners as a fairly opaque, technical process. Much of the burgeoning literature on DEA is concerned with technical enhancements to the method. This paper examines the idea that a useful role may be found for DEA as a means to inform policy discussions. This is illustrated by the method’s application to data relating to the activities of academic departments in a university-type institution, where a potentially misleading prior mythology existed.