Rh. Green et Jr. Doyle, IMPLEMENTING DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS - PRIMAL OR DUAL, INFOR. Information systems and operational research, 35(1), 1997, pp. 66-75
The computational performance of various implementations of a data env
elopment analysis model are investigated. These include primal and dua
l versions of both single-stage (epsilon represented as a small numeri
cal magnitude) and two-stage (epsilon not explicitly represented) appr
oaches. It is found, contrary to widely held belief, that the implemen
tation based on the primal DEA model is faster than that based on the
dual model, which has many fewer constraints. Some reasons for this un
expected finding are suggested.