Evaluating returns to scale and congestion by production possibility set in intersection form (Q547402)

This article presents an alternative method to calculate the returns to scale with multiple inputs and outputs in a data envelopment analysis (DEA) framework. The authors begin with a background overview of DEA and the definitions and terminology used in the paper. The second section then presents the main result of this work which is the estimation of the returns to scale based on the intersection form of the production set, whereas the classic DEA can be considered as being based on the sum form. The third and fourth sections of this very interesting paper prove the optimality of the proposed method and its impact on the calculation of the returns to scale, respectively. The article concludes with a demonstration of the procedure and two theoretical example problems.