A note on the convergence of nonparametric DEA estimators for production efficiency scores

Efficiency scores of production units are measured by their distance to an estimated production frontier. Nonparametric data envelopment analysis estimators are based on a finite sample of observed production units, and radial distances are considered. We investigate the consistency and the speed of convergence of these estimated efficiency scores (or of the radial distances) in the very general setup of a multioutput and multi-input case. It is shown that the speed of convergence relies on the smoothness of the unknown frontier and on the number of inputs and outputs. Furthermore, one has to distinguish between the output- and the input-oriented cases.