Data envelopment analysis (DEA), occasionally called frontier analysis, was first put forward by Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes in 1978. It is a performance measurement technique that, as we shall see, can be used for evaluating the relative efficiency of decision-making units (DMU’s) in organisations.
Here a DMU is a distinct unit within an organisation that has flexibility with respect to some of the decisions it makes, but not necessarily complete freedom with respect to these decisions. Examples of such units to which DEA has been applied are banks, police stations, hospitals, tax offices, prisons, defence bases (army, navy, air force), schools and university departments. Note here that one advantage of DEA is that it can be applied to non-profit making organisations. Many studies have been published dealing with applying DEA in real-world situations.
About the Resource Person:-Dr. Vipin V, a proud alumnus of SMO College, is a PhD graduate in Economics from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and presently working as an assistant professor at the Department of Economic
Sciences, Indian Institute of science education and Research (IISER)Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. His areas of specializations are AppliedEconometrics, IndustrialEconomics, and Efficiency and Productivity Analysis. He has published research articles in the field of applied economic analysis, particularly the performance evaluation using DataEnvelopment Analysis (DEA) and bootstrap DEA approach.
