Technical efficiency of thermoelectric power plants

This paper analyses the technical efficiency of Portuguese thermoelectric power generating plants with a two-stage procedure. In the first stage, the plants' relative technical efficiency is estimated with DEA (data envelopment analysis) to establish which plants perform most efficiently. These plants could serve as peers to help improve performance of the least efficient plants. The paper ranks these plants according to their relative efficiency for the period 1996-2004. In a second stage, the Simar and Wilson [Simar, L., Wilson, P.W., 2007. Estimation and inference in two-stage, semi-parametric models of production processes. Journal of Econometrics 136, 1-34] bootstrapped procedure is adopted to estimate the efficiency drivers. Economic implications arising from the study are considered.