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Investigation of the relative efficiency for the Greek listed firms of the construction sector based on two DEA approaches for the period 2006–2012

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Abstract

This paper applies two different approaches of data envelopment analysis (DEA) in order to investigate the relative efficiency for the Greek listed firms of the construction sector before and during the recession (before recession: 2006–2008; in recession: 2009–2012). In the first stage of this study an output DEA version based on financial ratios is introduced. The main contribution of this approach concerns the use of the Recursive Partitioning Algorithm in order to establish two different groups of variables, one for each sub-period. This technique enhances the estimated power of the first version of DEA model, since it provides for each period the ratios with the highest estimated value and the proposed model adjusted to the current economic circumstances. Although the results show that the number of the inefficient firms remains the same for both sub periods, there is an adjustment in the classification of non efficient and efficient firms. The second model is based on an input–output version of DEA with the use of accounting data as variables. This model classifies the majority of the firms as inefficient for the first sub-period, while the percentage of the efficient firms increases during the second sub-period, according to their average efficiency scores. In order to estimate the reliability of the DEA model a bootstrap method is also applied. The results are significant for discussion especially in relation to the assets’ management policy of firms before and during the recession.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 1 Sofokleous Street, 10559, Athens, Greece

    Apostolos G. Christopoulos & Ioannis G. Dokas

  2. School of Applied Mathematics and Physical Sciences, National Technical University of Athens, Zografou Campus, 157-80, Athens, Greece

    Sofia Katsimardou & Konstantinos Vlachogiannatos

Authors
  1. Apostolos G. Christopoulos
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  2. Ioannis G. Dokas
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  3. Sofia Katsimardou
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  4. Konstantinos Vlachogiannatos
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Apostolos G. Christopoulos.

Appendix

Appendix

In order to bootstrap DEA we use a Software Package for Frontier Efficiency Analysis with R (FEAR 1.0) developed by Wilson (2008). FEAR consists of a software library that can be used in the statistical package R. The routines included in FEAR allow us to correct DEA efficiencies for bias and to construct confidence intervals based on the estimated standard deviation for them. We also used for the code the book of Bogetoft and Lars (2011).

Indicatively, for the year 2009 the code is presented in the following Tables 8, 9 and 10:

Table 8 R code for bootstrapping
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Table 9 Auctions for works of budget over 2 mil. euros (first semester)
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Table 10 Auctions for works of budget between 2 and 100 mil. euros (first semester)
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Christopoulos, A.G., Dokas, I.G., Katsimardou, S. et al. Investigation of the relative efficiency for the Greek listed firms of the construction sector based on two DEA approaches for the period 2006–2012. Oper Res Int J 16, 423–444 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12351-015-0207-8

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