This open access book analyzes and seeks to consolidate the use of robust quantitative tools and qualitative methods for the design and assessment of energy and climate policies. In particular, it examines energy and climate policy performance and associated risks, as well as public acceptance and portfolio analysis in climate policy, and presents methods for evaluating the costs and benefits of flexible policy implementation as well as new framings for business and market actors. In turn, it discusses the development of alternative policy pathways and the identification of optimal switching points, drawing on concrete examples to do so. Lastly, it discusses climate change mitigation policies’ implications for the agricultural, food, building, transportation, service and manufacturing sectors.
Efficiency and productivity assessment are essential to ensure the long-term financial sustainability of countries, services and processes. In the last few years, there has been an increasing interest in the environmental effects of economic activities, and the need to assess the environmental and energy efficiency has been internationally recognized. Energy and environmental efficiency assessments of decision-making units (DMUs), such as countries, utilities, processes and services are relevant and have strong implications for companies, regulators, stakeholders, policy makers, and customers. To improve both the decision-making process and the management of DMUs, fundamental and practical knowledge about energy and environmental efficiency and productivity is essential
This book surveys the state-of-the-art in efficiency and productivity analysis, examining advances in the analytical foundations and empirical applications. The analytical techniques developed in this book for efficiency provide alternative ways of defining optimum outcome sets, typically as a (technical) production frontier or as an (economic) cost, revenue or profit frontier, and alternative ways of measuring efficiency relative to an appropriate frontier. Simultaneously, the analytical techniques developed for efficiency analysis extend directly to productivity analysis, thereby providing alternative methods for estimating productivity levels, and productivity change through time or productivity variation across producers. This book includes chapters using data envelopment analysis (DEA) or stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) as quantitative techniques capable of measuring efficiency and productivity. Across the book’s 15 chapters, it broadly extends into popular application areas including agriculture, banking and finance, and municipal performance, and relatively new application areas including corporate social responsibility, the value of intangible assets, land consolidation, and the measurement of economic well-being. The chapters also cover topics such as permutation tests for production frontier shifts, new indices of total factor productivity, and also randomized controlled trials and production frontiers.
Introduction to Data Envelopment Analysis and Its Uses: With DEA-Solver Software and References has been carefully designed by the authors to provide a systematic introduction to DEA and its uses as a multifaceted tool for evaluating problems in a variety of contexts. The authors have been involved in DEA's development from the beginning. William Cooper (with Abraham Charnes and Edwardo Rhodes) is a founder of DEA. Lawrence Seiford and Kaoru Tone have been actively involved as researchers and practitioners from its earliest beginnings. All have been deeply involved in uses of DEA in practical applications as well as in the development of its basic theory and methodologies. The result is a textbook grounded in authority, experience and substance.
1 DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was initially developed as a method for assessing the comparative efficiencies of organisational units such as the branches of a bank, schools, hospital departments or restaurants. The key in each case is that they perform feature which makes the units comparable the same function in terms of the kinds of resource they use and the types of output they produce. For example all bank branches to be compared would typically use staff and capital assets to effect income generating activities such as advancing loans, selling financial products and carrying out banking transactions on behalf of their clients. The efficiencies assessed in this context by DEA are intended to reflect the scope for resource conservation at the unit being assessed without detriment to its outputs, or alternatively, the scope for output augmentation without additional resources. The efficiencies assessed are comparative or relative because they reflect scope for resource conservation or output augmentation at one unit relative to other comparable benchmark units rather than in some absolute sense. We resort to relative rather than absolute efficiencies because in most practical contexts we lack sufficient information to derive the superior measures of absolute efficiency. DEA was initiated by Charnes Cooper and Rhodes in 1978 in their seminal paper Chames et al. (1978). The paper operationalised and extended by means of linear programming production economics concepts of empirical efficiency put forth some twenty years earlier by Farrell (1957).
This handbook covers DEA topics that are extensively used and solidly based. The purpose of the handbook is to (1) describe and elucidate the state of the field and (2), where appropriate, extend the frontier of DEA research. It defines the state-of-the-art of DEA methodology and its uses. This handbook is intended to represent a milestone in the progression of DEA. Written by experts, who are generally major contributors to the topics to be covered, it includes a comprehensive review and discussion of basic DEA models, which, in the present issue extensions to the basic DEA methods, and a collection of DEA applications in the areas of banking, engineering, health care, and services. The handbook's chapters are organized into two categories: (i) basic DEA models, concepts, and their extensions, and (ii) DEA applications. First edition contributors have returned to update their work. The second edition includes updated versions of selected first edition chapters. New chapters have been added on: different approaches with no need for a priori choices of weights (called “multipliers) that reflect meaningful trade-offs, construction of static and dynamic DEA technologies, slacks-based model and its extensions, DEA models for DMUs that have internal structures network DEA that can be used for measuring supply chain operations, Selection of DEA applications in the service sector with a focus on building a conceptual framework, research design and interpreting results.
This book presents the underlying theory, model development, and applications of network Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) in a systematic way. The field of network DEA extends and complements conventional DEA by considering not only inputs and outputs when measuring system efficiency, but also the internal structure of the system being analyzed. By analyzing the efficiency of individual internal components, and more particularly by studying the effects of relationships among components which are modeled and implemented by means of various network structures, the “network DEA” approach is able to help identify and manage the specific components that contribute inefficiencies into the overall systems. This relatively new approach comprises an important analytical tool based on mathematical programming techniques, with valuable implications to production and operations management. The existing models for measuring the efficiency of systems of specific network structures are also discussed, and the relationships between the system and component efficiencies are explored. This book should be able to inspire new research and new applications based on the current state of the art. Performance evaluation is an important task in management, and is needed to (i) better understand the past accomplishments of an organization and (ii) plan for its future development. However, this task becomes rather challenging when multiple performance metrics are involved. DEA is a powerful tool to cope with such issues. For systems or operations composed of interrelated processes, managers need to know how the performances of the various processes evaluated and how they are aggregated to form the overall performance of the system. This book provides an advanced exposition on performance evaluation of systems with network structures. It explores the network nature of most production and operation systems, and explains why network analyses are necessary.
In a relatively short period of time, data envelopment analysis (DEA) has grown into a powerful analytical tool for measuring and evaluating performance. DEA is computational at its core and this book is one of several Springer aim to publish on the subject. This work deals with the micro aspects of handling and modeling data issues in DEA problems. It is a handbook treatment dealing with specific data problems, including imprecise data and undesirable outputs.
Introduces a bold, new model for energy industry pollution prevention and sustainable growth Balancing industrial pollution prevention with economic growth is one of the knottiest problems faced by industry today. This book introduces a novel approach to using data envelopment analysis (DEA) as a powerful tool for achieving that balance in the energy industries—the world’s largest producers of greenhouse gases. It describes a rigorous framework that integrates elements of the social sciences, corporate strategy, regional economics, energy economics, and environmental policy, and delivers a methodology and a set of strategies for promoting green innovation while solving key managerial challenges to greenhouse gas reduction and business growth. In writing this book the authors have drawn upon their pioneering work and considerable experience in the field to develop an unconventional, holistic approach to using DEA to assess key aspects of sustainability development. The book is divided into two sections, the first of which lays out a conventional framework of DEA as the basis for new research directions. In the second section, the authors delve into conceptual and methodological extensions of conventional DEA for solving problems of environmental assessment in all contemporary energy industry sectors. Introduces a powerful new approach to using DEA to achieve pollution prevention, sustainability, and business growth Covers the fundamentals of DEA, including theory, statistical models, and practical issues of conventional applications of DEA Explores new statistical modeling strategies and explores their economic and business implications Examines applications of DEA to environmental analysis across the complete range of energy industries, including coal, petroleum, shale gas, nuclear energy, renewables, and more Summarizes important studies and nearly 800 peer reviewed articles on energy, the environment, and sustainability Environmental Assessment on Energy and Sustainability by Data Envelopment Analysis is must-reading for researchers, academics, graduate students, and practitioners in the energy industries, as well as government officials and policymakers tasked with regulating the environmental impacts of industrial pollution.
