Description: In a relatively short period of time Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has grown into a powerful quantitative, analytical tool for measuring and evaluating performance. It has been successfully applied to a host of different entities engaged in a wide variety of activities in many contexts worldwide. In many cases evaluations of these entities have been resistant to other approaches because complex, multiple levels of (often) poorly understood relations must be considered. A few examples of these multifaceted problems are (1) maintenance activities of U.S., England, and France. In addition to localized problems, DEA applications have been extended to performance evaluations of "larger entities" such as cities, regions and countries. These extensions have a wider scope than traditional analyses because they include "social" and "safety-net" expenditures as inputs and various "quality-of-life" dimensions as outputs.

In other applications, DEA has been used to supply new insights into business activities and into the methods that have been used to evaluate these activities. These include "benchmarking" studies of professional organizations inclusing legal and accounting societies, as well as organizational forms -- such as evaluating the relative efficiencies of the "mutual" vs. "corporate" forms of organization that are used in the U.S. insurance industry. Finally, DEA can also be used to evaluate objects as well as governmental, business and societal activities.

Data Envelopment Analysis: A Comprehensive Text with Models, Applications, References, and DEA-Solver Software is designed to provide a systematic introduction to DEA and its uses as a multifaceted tool for evaluating problemsin a variety of contexts. Each chapter accompanies its developments with simple numerical examples and discussions of actual applications. The objective is to introduce students, researchers, and practitioners in business, economics, engineering and the sciences to Data Envelopment Analysis.

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