Because of the piecewise linear nature of the frontier in data envelopment analysis (DEA), estimated marginal rates of substitution are only valid for infinitesimal, or small finite, changes in one or more variables. Analysing the impacts of very small changes is not adequate for many...

The Malmquist index is a measure of productivity changes, of which an important component is the frontier shift or technological change. Often technological change can be viewed as a global phenomenon, and therefore individual or local measures of technological changes are aggregated into an...

For some investors their own personal investment counsellors address their investment strategy; for others automated means are used. To protect investors, the Canadian Government has enacted the "Know Your Client" Act requiring that all investment dealers and vendors of securities must know...

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...

The shortage of medical resources (mainly beds) is a critical and increasingly prevalent problem affecting hospitals. Of the factors that contribute to these shortages, the ambiguity and insufficiency of the criteria used to identify whether an inpatient should be discharged are among the most...

Typical questionnaires administered by financial advisors to assess financial risk tolerance mostly contain stereotypes of people, have seemingly unscientific scoring approaches and often treat risk as a one-dimensional concept. In this work, a mathematical tool was developed to assess relative...

This paper develops a new grouping approach in using data envelopment analysis as a framework to identify management groups and group performance leaders. The management group relies on the fact that branches grouped together present similar managerial preferences over performance goals and...

It is interesting to observe how long it takes to move a powerful new technology from the academic to the practitioners' world and to understand what constitutes acceptance and adoption by professionals.~Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was introduced in 1978 but has been only sporadically used...