Two-stage data envelopment analysis of Spanish regions: Efficiency determinants and stability analysis

The purpose of this paper is to examine the hypothesis that the efficiency of Spanish tourism regions for the period 2005-2013 is determined by a group of contextual variables. In contrast with monitoring reports based on descriptive methods, this paper uses the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) bootstrap semiparametric procedure to investigate efficiency determinants. An innovative analysis addresses the problem of the stability of efficiency estimates of random changes in the isolated exogenous variables. The statistical significance of the potential attractors can offer a tool for strategic decisions, and no previous work compares the stability analysis results to the estimates derived from the two-stage algorithm. The model appropriately fits the data, with all the coefficients being of the correct sign and statistically significant. Hence, the fact that the exogenous variables influence the hypothesis is confirmed by the results, and the stability analysis helps to verify the significance of each variable. We also extend the traditional DEA analysis by exploring efficiency and productivity changes using the slacks-based measure (SBM) model and the bootstrapped Malmquist index approach to obtain total productivity growth estimates.