Over the past quarter of a century since its inception, Data Envelopment Analysis has burgeoned into a rich and luxuriant field of research within the broad area of productivity and efficiency analysis. Valuable contributions in the form of new models, creative extensions of existing models, and innovative empirical applications to new areas continuously add to the voluminous literature. In such a vibrant and dynamic context, no book on the subject of DEA can remain current or up to date very long.

As stated at the outset, the objective of this book was to familiarize the reader with the economic foundations of the various DEA models that are currently available and widely used in the literature which, in turn, should make the technical details of the relevant mathematical programming models more easily understandable. With the background provided in this book, the interested reader should be able to follow the new contributions appearing in various journals without much difficulty.

The major outlets for research in DEA include, among others, Management Science, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Productivity Analysis, and Socio-Economic Planning Sciences. In particular, Journal of Productivity Analysis (under the editorship of Knox Lovell) has played a significant role in bridging the gap between the economics and OR/MS strands on the one hand and the stochastic frontier and DEA practitioners on the other.