The Application of Mathematical Programming Techniques to Financial Statement Analysis: Australian Gold Production and Exploration

A sample of thirty listed Australian gold producers is used to compare the financial perfor Mance measures provided by accountingâ€based financial ratios, and production perfor Mance as measured by efficiency indices. The results indicate that simple ratios are unlikely to provide efficiency rankings similar to those obtained from multipleâ€input, multipleâ€output methodologies. However, whilst the two methods can disagree substantially on the relative perfor Mance of individual decisionâ€making units, when used jointly the results can offer valuable insights into the concept of firm perfor Mance.