A cautionary note on methods of comparing programmatic efficiency between two or more groups of DMUs in data envelopment analysis

Gary Simpson*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

In some applications of data envelopment analysis (DEA) there may be doubt as to whether all the DMUs form a single group with a common efficiency distribution. The Mann-Whitney rank statistic has been used to evaluate if two groups of DMUs come from a common efficiency distribution under the assumption of them sharing a common frontier and to test if the two groups have a common frontier. These procedures have subsequently been extended using the Kruskal-Wallis rank statistic to consider more than two groups. This technical note identifies problems with the second of these applications of both the Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis rank statistics. It also considers possible alternative methods of testing if groups have a common frontier, and the difficulties of disaggregating managerial and programmatic efficiency within a non-parametric framework. © 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)141-147
Number of pages7
JournalJournal of Productivity Analysis
Volume28
Issue number1-2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2007

Bibliographical note

The original publication is available at springerlink.com

Keywords

  • data envelopment analysis (DEA)
  • programmatic efficiency
  • statistics

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