A Note on the Convergence of Nonparametric DEA Efficiency Measures

Efficiency scores of production units are measured by their distance to an estimated production frontier. Nonparametric DEA estimators are based on a finite sample of observed production unites and radial distances are considered. We investigate the consistency and the speed of convergence of these estimated efficiency scores in the very general setup of multi-output and multi-input case. It is shown that the speed of convergence relies on the smoothness of the unknown frontier and on the number of inputs and of outputs. Furthermore, one has to distinguish between the ouput- and the input-oriented case.