Article ID: | iaor20062959 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 56 |
Issue: | 12 |
Start Page Number: | 1439 |
End Page Number: | 1447 |
Publication Date: | Dec 2005 |
Journal: | Journal of the Operational Research Society |
Authors: | Lozano S., Villa G. |
Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) can be used for assessing the relative efficiency of a number of operating units, finding, for each inefficient unit, a target operating point lying on the efficient frontier. Most DEA models project an inefficient unit onto a most distant target, which makes its attainment more difficult. In this paper, we advocate determining a sequence of targets, each one within an appropriate, short distance of the preceding. The proposed Constant Returns to Scale approach has two interesting features: (a) the sequence of targets ends in the efficient frontier and (b) the final, efficient target is generally closer to the original unit than the one-step projection is.