In for-profit organizations, profit efficiency decomposition is considered important since estimates on profit drivers are of practical use to managers in their decision making. Profit efficiency is traditionally due to two sources – technical efficiency and allocative efficiency. The...

The determination of closest efficient targets has attracted increasing interest of researchers in recent Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) literature. Several methods have been introduced in this respect. However, only a few attempts exist that analyze the implications of using closest targets on...

As a measure of overall technical inefficiency, the Directional Distance Function (DDF) introduced by Chambers, Chung, and Färe ties the potential output expansion and input contraction together through a single parameter. By duality, the DDF is related to a measure of profit inefficiency,...

We discuss how to properly decompose economic efficiency when the underlying technology is non-homothetic using alternative allocative and technical efficiency criteria. We first show that only under the production of one output and assuming the particular case of constant returns to scale...

In two recent papers, Lozano and Villa [Centralized resource allocation using data envelopment analysis. Journal of Productivity Analysis 2004;22:143-61. [1]] and Lozano et al. [Centralized target setting for regional recycling operations using DEA. OMEGA 2004;32:101-10. [2]] introduce the concept of...