Benchmarking with DEA, SFA, and R. (Q612878)

The book presents recent advances and developments in efficiency evaluation with special emphasis on the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) methods. The DEA method is a non-parametric, deterministic approach with its roots in mathematical programming, whereas the SFA method is stochastic and parametric in nature and closely related to econometric concepts. First, the authors give an introduction to benchmarking, thought of the systematic comparison of the performance of one firm against other firms. Benchmarking includes learning, coordination, and motivation. The next step in the analysis relates to ideal evaluations and to the development of key performance indicators and ratios. An extension of the approach is given by enlarging the models to multiple inputs and multiple outputs. Based on these conceptual issues, the authors discuss the process from effectiveness to efficiency and turn over to the concept of ``best practice'' or frontier analysis, which concludes the book. With respect to the frontier analysis, one has to distinguish between deterministic and stochastic frontier methods. And each method again can be distinguished by being parametric or non-parametric in nature. The book is addressed to graduate students, advanced consultants and practitioners with an interest in quantitative performance evaluation. Although the topics covered in the book are overwhelmingly mathematical in nature, the authors abstain from formal proof in the main text part. Proof are either given in appendices or, alternatively, references are given were the respective proof can be found in the literature. Furthermore, throughout the book, the authors present and discuss numerous applications to demonstrate the applicability and usefulness of the DEA and SFA methods. In the appendix the authors give a brief introduction to the programming software \texttt{R} and they give some information how to install the software on a PC. \texttt{R} is freeware and can be downloaded by everyone who is interested in this programming language.