A Review on the 40 Years of Existence of Data Envelopment Analysis Models: Historic Development and Current Trends

Abstract

DEA, incepted in 80s, has emerged as a popular decision-making technique, for determining the efficiency of similar units. Due to its simplicity and applicability, DEA has gained the attention of scientists and researchers working in diverse areas, which has contributed towards a rich literature both in terms of theoretical development as well as different applications. This paper tries to bring together the near 40 years of existence of DEA in a concise format by discussing the popular DEA models, their advantages and shortcomings, and different applications of DEA. It also provides a brief bibliometric analysis to highlight the development of DEA over the years in terms of publication trends, highly cited papers, journal citation, etc.