In a production technology, the type of returns to scale (RTS) associated with an efficient decision making unit (DMU) is indicative of the direction of marginal rescaling that the DMU should undertake in order to improve its productivity. In this paper a concept of global returns to scale (GRS)...

An economic measure of scale efficiency is the ratio of the minimum average cost to the average cost at the actual output level of a firm. It is easily measured by the ratio of the total cost of this output under the constant and variable returns to scale assumptions. This procedure does not...

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a tool for measuring the relative efficiency of decision-making units (DMUs) that perform similar tasks. One of the uses of the DEA is the establishment of benchmarks for inefficient DMUs. These benchmarks play the role of target for inefficient DMUs. However,...

The aim of this paper is to investigate and measure the relative efficiency of LEADER+ action plans of seven rural areas in Northern Greece. To this end, a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model is used, which is based on data from LEADER+ provided by the Ministry of Agriculture. In particular,...

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) have become a more and more important topic in the management and development of companies. Companies usually conduct M&A to preserve or extend their competitive advantages. However, M&As usually fail in real life. For the given bidder company, a critical step to...

The free disposal hull (FDH) models are used as an alternative to data envelopment analysis (DEA) models for performance measurement and efficiency assessment. The conventional FDH models are used to evaluate the performance of a set of firms or decision-making units (DMUs) using deterministic...

This study attempts to characterise performance in terms of a simple indicator (revenue) to a multi-dimensional systems perspective, which includes the development of eco-efficiency and the sustainable development indicator. The influence of Perfluorocompounds (PFCs) on the operating performance...

Weextend the concept of returns to scale in Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA) to the weight restriction environments. By the additionof weight restrictions, the status of returns to scale, i.e., increasing, constant and decreasing may suffer a change. Wefirst define ``returns to scale'' under...

In this paper we use data from the years 1997–2003 to evaluate the size efficiency, as distinct from scale efficiency, of Indian banks. Following Maindiratta [Maindiratta A (1990) J Econ 46:39–56] we consider a bank to be “too large” if breaking it up into a number of smaller units would...

A new approach is supplied for locating efficiency frontiers and evaluating the efficiency of Decision Making Units (DMU's). This is accomplished from observational data by means of an envelopment procedure called DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) originally developed by Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes...