This paper deals with the performance of franchise chains related to their percentage of company-owned outlets (PCO). This research uses a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to assess franchise chains’ efficiency, and a meta-frontier approach to analyze chains’ efficiency between and across...

Since the 1990s, efficiency and benchmarking analysis has increasingly been used in network utilities research and regulation. A recurrent concern is the effect of environmental factors that are beyond the influence of firms (observable heterogeneity) and factors that are not identifiable...