Variable and Constant Returns-to-Scale Production Technologies with Component Processes

Abstract

Efficiency Analysis for Multicomponent Production Processes Conventional models concerned with efficiency analysis of organizations typically consider a single production process, or technology, in which all inputs are used in the production of all outputs. This approach does not account well for the situations in which the organizations are involved in several component production processes whose inputs and outputs may be shared by different processes. The main difficulty in modeling such technologies is the fact that we often do not know the exact allocation of the shared inputs and outputs to individual processes. In “Variable and Constant Returns-to-Scale Production Technologies with Component Processes,” V. V. Podinovski shows how this problem can be overcome by the consideration of the worst-case scenario for the allocation of the shared inputs and outputs to different components of the technology. This approach leads to the development of multicomponent variants of two well-established nonparametric models. An application involving universities in England demonstrates the usefulness and improved discriminating power of the new models compared with their conventional analogues.