In July 1996, at the IFORS conference in Vancouver, the idea of a Euro DEA Working Group emerged, from the realisation that so many people working in the field could profit from a forum where they could discuss their ideas and foster collaborative work. Therefore the group was created in January 1997 by Robert G. Dyson, Dr A. Emrouznejad, Prof. J. T. Pastor, Dr C. S. Sarrico and Prof. E. Thanassoulis.

The EURO Working Group on Data Envelopment Analysis and Performance Measurement (Euro-DEAPM) provides an excellent opportunity to discuss recent and important issues in these fields both in theory and practice.

Dr Meryem Duygun Fethi Efficiency & Productivity Research Unit Management Centre Ken Edwards Building University of Leicester University Road Leicester LE1 7RH UNITED KINGDOM www.le.ac.uk/ulmc/epu Phone: + 44 116 252 5328 Fax: + 44 116 252 5515 Email: m.fethi@le.ac.uk

Dr Thiele Holger University University of Kiel Department of Food Economics and Consumption studies Olshausenstrasse 40 24118 Kiel Germany Tel. +49-431-880-4429 Fax. +49-431-880-7380

 

Dr Mikko Syrjänen Helsinki Helsinki School of Economics, Quantitative Methods, P.O.Box 1210 00101 Helsinki, Finland Tel. +358-9-431 38485 Fax. +358-9-431 38535

Tarja Joro Dept. of Finance and Management Science, Faculty of Business, 3-23 Business Building, Univ. of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T6G 2R6.

Katrin Allen Lehrstuhl fuer Unternehmenstheorie, insb. Umweltoekonomie und industrielles Controlling, RWTH Aachen, Templergraben 64, D - 52056 Aachen, Germany.

Members of Organising Committee (in 1998) are:

Prof. Robert G. Dyson Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK R.G.Dyson@warwick.ac.uk

Dr Ali Emrouznejad Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL , UK a_emrouznejad@hotmail.com

Prof. J. T. Pastor Universidad Miguel Hernandez, Rectorado Paseo Melchor Botella, s/n 03206-Elche (Alicante) SPAIN JTPASTOR@UMH.ALC.ES

Dr C. S. Sarrico Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK

Prof. E. Thanassoulis Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK orset@warwick.ac.uk

DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) is the optimisation method of mathematical programming that generalises Farrell's (1957) single-input/ single-output technical efficiency measure to the multiple-input/ multiple-output case. Thus DEA became a new tool in operational research for measuring technical efficiency. It was originally developed by Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes (1978) with constant returns to scale, and was extended by Banker, Charnes and Cooper (1984) to include variable returns to scale. So the basic DEA models are known as CCR and BCC. Since 1978 over 1000 articles, books and dissertation have been published, and DEA has rapidly extended to returns to scale, dummy or categorical variables, discretionary and non-discretionary variables, incorporating value judgements, longitudinal analysis, weight restrictions, stochastic DEA, non-parametric Malmquist indices, technical change in DEA and many other topics. Up to now the DEA measure has been used to evaluate and compare educational departments (schools, colleges and universities), health care (hospitals, clinics) prisons, agricultural production, banking, armed forces, sports, market research, transportation (highway maintenance), courts, benchmarking, index number construction and many other applications.

At the moment researchers follow wide ranges of DEA and related topics. The main research areas of DEA are:

• Returns to scale
• Dummy or categorical variables
• Discretionary and non-discretionary variables
• Incorporating judgement
• Longitudinal analysis
• Weights restrictions
• Stochastic DEA
• Non-parametric Malmquist indices
• Technical change in DEA
• Invariance properties of DEA models
• DEA model specification and influential observations, and many other topics.
  
  Based on the above, a new EURO Working Group on DEA and Performance Measurement has been recently established, after an application to EURO Executive Committee.
  
  The main objectives of the group are to:

• Foster collaborative research between members of different institutions, countries, and professional backgrounds.
• Organise specialist conferences and workshops in the area of DEA and Performance Measurement.
• Specialist publications of issues in the area.
• Organisation of good quality conference streams in the area.

Future planned activities include:

• Organisation of Group meeting within the framework of EURO OR conferences
• Workshops specifically for practitioners.
• Mini EURO Conference.
• EURO Summer Institute, more specifically for postgraduate students.
• Special issue of EJO

Dear DEAPM members,

This year's North American Productivity Workshop (NAPW2) will take place at Union College in Schenectady, New York, USA, June 20-22, 2002 (http://idol.union.edu/~napw).

There will be an informal pre-conference workshop on June 19. This workshop will continue the tradition of pre- and post-conference workshops held in conjunctions with the previous North-America productivity workshop and with the two previous European Workshops of Efficiency and Productivity Analysis. EURO working group DEAPM has been involved in organizing these pre- and post-conference workshops since the beginning.

The main purpose of these workshops is to provide graduate students with an opportunity to present papers and to discuss work in progress. Several senior scholars will be participating in the pre-conference sessions and providing valuable feedback to the students. There will also be panel discussions and/or special presentations covering topics that are of interest to graduate students. In addition, all pre-conference workshop participants are welcome to participate in the poster session of the main workshop as well.

Based on the experience from the previous years, this is an opportunity not to be missed for all graduate students in our area!

Graduate students interested in participating into the pre-conference workshop should register via the NAPW website. The registration deadline is Feb 1. All graduate students are eligible for the reduced registration rate and for inexpensive dormitory accommodations. In addition, modest travel grants are expected to be available for graduate students outside of North America. (See the abstract submission form in http://idol.union.edu/~napw.)

Please forward this call to your doctoral students and to anyone who might be interested.

Sincerely,

Mikko Syrjänen and Tarja Joro
EURO Working Group DEAPM