Efficiency Measurement: A Methodological Review and Synthesis

Pierre Ouellette and Patrick Petit

Data Envelopment Analysis Journal, 2018, vol. 4, issue 1, 67-107

Abstract: Measuring efficiency has become the core objective of a structured research agenda in production economics and management sciences since at least the early 1980s. The methods used, however, might have a significant impact on results and need to be adapted to the data at hand. Using a synthetic general model to compare the various approaches and relying on key contributions of the literature, we show that each class of model implies specific assumptions on the nature of the data, and that in some cases, the models are inconsistent. Most studies meet the basic requirements proposed by Cowing and Stevenson in 1983, as they rely on the solid theoretical foundations of production economics. Yet, many methods were nevertheless developed in the fields of statistics, operations research, or accounting. These methods often fail to include all relevant theoretical considerations. For example, authors relying on economic theory have applied empirical methods with stochastic error terms that are sometimes at odds with certain properties of their models.

Keywords: Performance measurement; productivity measurement and analysis; econometric models; microeconometrics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/103.00000024 (application/xml)

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:now:jnldea:103.00000024

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Data Envelopment Analysis Journal from now publishers
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lucy Wiseman ().