Past-present-future Intertemporal DEA models

It has been well recognized that to thoroughly evaluate a firm’s performance, the evaluator must assess not only its past and present records but also future potential. However, to the best of our knowledge, there are no data envelopment analysis (DEA)‐type models proposed in the literature that simultaneously take past, present and, especially, future performance indicators into account. Hence, this research aims at developing a new type of DEA model referred to as Intertemporal DEA models that can be used to fully measure a firm’s efficiency by explicitly considering its key inputs and outputs involving the past‐present‐future time span. In this research, the proposed Intertemporal DEA models are applied to the performance evaluation of high‐tech Integrated Circuit design companies in Taiwan to demonstrate their advantages over other DEA models that ignore intertemporal efficiency.