DEA of Financial Statements Data: The U.S. Computer Industry.

DEA (data envelopment analysis) is a technique for determining the efficiency frontier (the envelope) to the inputs and outputs of a collection of individual corporations or other productive units. DEA is here employed to estimate the intertemporal productive efficiency of U.S. computer manufacturers, using financial data brought from earnings statements and balance sheets. The results indicate that a few corporations, including Apple Computer Inc., Compaq Computer Corp., and Seagate Technology were able to stay at the productivity efficiency frontier throughout the time period investigated. But not all successful corporations did; sometimes subefficiency (=disequilibrium) actually goes together with very rapid growth. A new Malmquist type productivity index is calculated for each corporation, measuring shifts of the estimated intenemporal efficiency frontier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]