Evaluating Two-Stage Network Structures: Bargaining Game Approach

This chapter presents a Nash bargaining game model to measure the performance of two-stage decision making units (DMUs) in data envelopment analysis (DEA). The two stages are viewed as players to bargain for a better payoff, which is represented by DEA ratio efficiency score. The efficiency model is developed as a cooperative game model. It is shown that when only one intermediate measure exists between the two stages, the newly-developed bargaining approach yields the same results as applying the standard DEA approach to each stage separately.