Evaluation of research in efficiency and productivity: A survey and analysis of the first 30 years of scholarly literature in DEA

Since the original Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) study by Charnes et al. [Measuring the efficiency of decision-making units. European Journal of Operational Research 1978;2(6):429–44], there has been rapid and continuous growth in the field. As a result, a considerable amount of published research has appeared, with a significant portion focused on DEA applications of efficiency and productivity in both public and private sector activities. While several bibliographic collections have been reported, a comprehensive listing and analysis of DEA research covering its first 30 years of history is not available.This paper thus presents an extensive, if not nearly complete, listing of DEA research covering theoretical developments as well as “real-world” applications from inception to the year 2007.A listing of the most utilized/relevant journals, a keyword analysis, and selected statistics are presented.