Under fairly general assumptions requiring neither a differentiable frontier nor a constant-returns-to-scale technology, this paper introduces a new definition of an optimal scale size based on the minimization of unit costs. The corresponding measure, average-cost efficiency, combines scale and...

Performance indicators in the public sector have often been criticised for being inadequate and not conducive to analysing efficiency. The main objective of this study is to use data envelopment analysis (DEA) to examine the relative efficiency of Australian universities. Three performance...

Profitability change can be decomposed into the product of a total factor productivity (TFP) index and an index measuring changes in relative prices. Many TFP indexes can be further decomposed into measures of technical change, technical efficiency change, scale efficiency change and mix...

In the paper technical efficiency of Russian plastic and rubber production firms in 2006–2010 is estimated by SFA. It is demonstrated that increasing firm size will cause increase in its efficiency and also there is increasing returns to scale in the sector. This result is robust for various...

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the efficiency of the global primary aluminum industry. Efficiency is here taken to be evaluated relative to some benchmark, i.e., the smelter or smelters identified as the most efficient in the data set, thus forming the production frontier. The...

The objective of this study is to assess the scale and technical efficiencies and other economic performance measures of southeastern U.S. cow-calf farms. We describe and compare cow-calf operations by size and farm resource region and measure their relative competitiveness. We estimate an input...

This paper assesses the total factor productivity (TFP) growth and efficiency levels in the Indian dairy processing industry using the Tornqvist index and data envelopment analysis (DEA) models over the period 1980-2008. We utilize a different empirical approach and extend the data sets. To...

This article analyses the agricultural production efficiency of all cities and areas in Shaanxi Province in the period 2006-2009 using data envelopment analysis method, and compares the agricultural production efficiency between all cities and areas. The results show that the agricultural...

The main purpose of the present paper is to investigate the impact of the global financial crisis on the efficiency of Greek banks during the period 2008-2010. The DEA model is applied according to input oriented approach in order to measure the technical and the scale efficiency scores of 20...