This paper provides a formal statistical basis for the efficiency evaluation techniques of data envelopment analysis (DEA). DEA estimators of the best practice monotone increasing and concave production function are shown to be also maximum likelihood estimators if the deviation of actual output...

Units can have two or more important strength properties. A procedure is described for estimating the correlation between two strength properties that, individually, can only be observed through destructive testing. The procedure involves proof loading a unit in one failure mode and then loading...