Data envelopment analysis and its key variants utilized in the transport sector

Abstract

Having reviewed the international literature on data envelopment analysis (DEA), a non-parametric linear programming method used for efficiency evaluation, the aim of the author with the present article was to fill a gap by collecting and summarizing the essence of the main variants of DEA applied in the transport sector. Thus the DEA CCR, BCC and the Simar-Wilson method are presented. DEA CCR enables the efficiency evaluation under constant, DEA BCC under variable returns to scale. The Simar-Wilson method, also referred to as the truncated bootstrap method, is currently seen as the most reliable technique for hypothesis testing and confidence interval estimation under DEA. Some extensions, like the super-efficient DEA, the principal component analysis and the MNDEA are also highlighted. The variants included in the article were selected on the basis of their application in the transport sector, of which examples are also provided.