Various attempts to assess the performance of German hospitals have generated a wide range of estimates regarding their efficiency. These attempts were based on different, often rather small data sets consisting of heterogeneous hospitals; the techniques applied range from simple benchmarking...

Starting from existing static decompositions of overall economic efficiency on nonparametric production and cost frontiers, this article proposes more comprehensive decompositions including several cost-based notions of capacity utilization. Furthermore, in case prices are lacking, we develop...