A new method for measuring congestion in data envelopment analysis

In data envelopment analysis (DEA), there are two principal methods for identifying and measuring congestion: Those of Färe et al. [Färe R, Grosskopf S. When can slacks be used to identify congestion. An answer to W. W. Cooper, L. Seiford, J. Zhu. Socio-Economic Planning Sciences 2001;35:1–10] and Cooper et al. [Cooper WW, Deng H, Huang ZM, Li SX. A one-model approach to congestion in data envelopment analysis. Socio-Economic Planning Sciences 2002;36:231–8]. In the present paper, we focus on the latter work in proposing a new method that requires considerably less computation. Then, by proving a selected theorem, we show that our proposed methodology is indeed equivalent to that of Cooper et al.