Measuring technical efficiency of state-owned enterprises in Asia Pacific and European regions: a data envelopment analysis

Abstract

This paper asseses the efficiency of the State-Owned Enterprise (SOE) in Asia-Pacific and European regions by adapting a non-parametric analysis, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to compute technical efficiency (TE). There are two TE models available namely constant returns-to-scale (CRS) and Variable Return to Scale (VRS). The VRS has comforted the CRS model, which brings to an assumption that not all DMU operates at optimal scale. This model is able to decompose TE into two; i.e. Pure Technical Efficiency (PTE) and Scale Efficiency (SE. Therefore this investigation abides VRS by computing TE, PTE and SE on 170 SOEs in both economies countries for the period of 2010–2017. It is initially looking at the yearly efficiency trends as a measurement towards the ability of SOEs to produce the maximum output from a given set of inputs or, the ability to reduce inputs to produce the same amount of output over a certain period of time. It has discovered that SOE in emerging economies countries exhibit significantly higher TE in comparison to SOE in advanced economies countries. This study also reveals that PTE (managerial inefficiency) is the root cause of SOE’s under-achievements in both economies countries.