Prioritization models for frontier decision making units in DEA

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has received significant attention in recent years as a tool for measuring the relative efficiency of each member of a set of Decision Making Units (DMUs). Typically, a relatively large proportion of the DMUs will be credited with an efficiency score of 1, with no clear means of discriminating among such units. In a number of applications, however, it may be necessary to select a ‘winning’ DMU from this set of frontier units. This paper examines various conditions that are imposed on the multipliers in a DEA analysis. In each case, an approach is suggested for breaking ties on the frontier.