Guest Editors' Note on the Special Issue on the Innovative Applications of Data Envelopment Analysis to Accounting and Finance

There have been impressive growths in applications of data envelopment analysis (DEA) to areas such as accounting and finance in recent years. This special issue is specifically designed to encourage innovative applications of DEA to accounting and finance. Following a rigorous review process, four articles have been selected to be included in this special issue.The “Bankruptcy risk, productivity and firm strategy," by Bryan et al. examines the relationship between productivity, firm strategy, and bankruptcy risk. The empirical results indicate that productivity has a positive effect on reducing bankruptcy risk. The study also brings to light the mediating effect of productivity in the relationship of strategy and bankruptcy risk. The “Taiwan second financial restructuring and commercial bank productivity growth: M&As impact," by Hsiao and Lin assesses the impact of the M&A policy of “Second financial restructuring (SFR) on the productivity growth of commercial banks in Taiwan. It documents that merged banks had improved their productivity, technology, and scale efficiency in the post SFR period. In addition, the greater productivity growth of merged banks than non-merged banks is attributable to small-sized and private-voluntary merged banks. The “Ownership structure and efficiency in Taiwanese electronics firms," by Yang et al. investigates the effect of the separation of control and ownership on the efficiency performance of Taiwanese electronics firms. Analyzing a panel dataset for the period from 2004 to 2010, they observe that both the divergence between voting rights and cash flow rights, and the divergence between seat control rights and cash flow rights are significantly and negatively related to efficiency performance. Last, but not the least, “The impact of nursing quality on nursing home efficiency," by Chang and Cheng evaluates the impact of nursing quality on Taiwan nursing homes, and differences of efficiency among different management types of nursing homes. Their empirical results demonstrate that nursing quality is an important factor in the efficiency measurement of nursing homes because nursing quality has significant impacts on operating efficiency of nursing home