Scale Efficiency: Where Data Envelopment Analysis Outperforms Stochastic Production Function Estimation

Robustness of DEA scale efficiency scores is investigared in the context of non-radial efficency measures. Most efficient scales are identified with DEA's refernce firms instead of traditional clustering techniques.The systematic difference between single- and multi-output technologies as concerns most efficient scales is then examined by comparing applied DEA results. These provide evidence in favor of my proposition, that single-output techniques, like stochastic production function estimation, yield upwardly biased most efficient scales.