Measuring the performance improvement of Taiwan forests after reorganization

The data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach has been widely applied to mea sure the relative efficiencies of decision making units (DMUs) for a time p eriod. This article measures the performance improvement of a DMU at two ti me points by using the DEA approach. Two ideas are proposed. One is to trea t one DMU at two time points as two different DMUs, and the ratio of the ef ficiency scores of a DMU at two time points serves as a measure of the effi ciency improvement. The other is to calculate the Malmquist productivity in dex of a DMU to represent its productivity improvement. Both the efficiency ratio and the productivity index can be decomposed into the technical part and the scale part. From the data of the eight forest districts of Taiwan compiled in 1989 and 1992, the efficiency and productivity improvement in t hese two periods are measured. The results of the two methods are consisten t in that both indicate a slight improvement in performance.