9 – Conclusions

DEA is a novel approach to relative efficiency measurement where there are multiple incommensurate inputs and outputs. If a suitable set of measures can be defined DEA provides an efficiency measure not relying on the application of a common weighting of the inputs and outputs. Additionally the method identifies peer units and targets for inefficient units. A number of issues arising from the application of DEA have also been addressed. A full bibliography of DEA including applications has been compiled by Seiford(8).