Identification of Outliers in Data Envelopment Analysis

Marcel Clermont () and Julia Schaefer ()
Additional contact information
Marcel Clermont: Duale Hochschule Gera-Eisenach
Julia Schaefer: RWTH Aachen University

Schmalenbach Business Review, 2019, vol. 71, issue 4, No 3, 475-496

Abstract: Abstract Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a deterministic method for the aggregation of multidimensional measures and subsequent efficiency analysis. Due to its inherent determinism, however, it reacts sensitively to outliers in datasets. Existing methods for identifying such outliers have two main disadvantages. First, from a more conceptional point of view, a uniform definition of an outlier is missing. Second, there are technical disadvantages of each method. For instance, arbitrarily limited values have to be set by the user, like the amount of efficiency value from which on a decision making unit is regarded as an outlier. This paper initially presents a definition of outliers, which explicitly takes the specifics of DEA into account. Based on this definition, an approach for identifying outliers in DEA is introduced which explicitly tackles the technical disadvantages and takes them into account in the developed algorithm. The plausibility of this approach is validated on the basis of empirical examples from performance measurement at the university level.

Keywords: Data Envelopment Analysis; Outlier detection; Efficiency analysis; Performance measurement; Cluster analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C67 M11 M49 P47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41464-019-00078-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:schmbr:v:71:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s41464-019-00078-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/41464

DOI: 10.1007/s41464-019-00078-7

Access Statistics for this article

Schmalenbach Business Review is currently edited by Alfred Wagenhofer

More articles in Schmalenbach Business Review from Springer, Schmalenbach-Gesellschaft
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().