Finding the best asset financing alternative: A DEA-WEO approach

Abstract

Measurement of performance is an important activity in identifying weaknesses in managerial efficiency and devising goals for improvement. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a mathematical quantitative approach for measuring the performance of a set of similar units. Toloo (2013) extended a DEA approach for finding the most efficient unit considering a data set without explicit inputs. The aim of this paper is to develop DEA models without explicit outputs, henceforth called DEA–WEO, to find the most efficient unit when outputs are not directly considered. The suggested models directly utilize the data without the need of adding a virtual output, whose value is equal to for all units. A real data set involving 139 different alternatives for long-term asset financing provided by Czech banks and leasing companies is taken to illustrate the potential application of the proposed approach.