Comparison of Different Methods for Estimation of Returns to Scale in Nonradial Data Envelopment Analysis Models

Abstract: The data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach has been actively developed in recentyears and is used to analyze the activities of complex production units (regions, financialinstitutions, industrial enterprises, etc.). An important role in such an analysis is played by thecalculation of various indicators of the activity of units: returns to scale, efficiency scores,marginal rates of substitution, transformations, etc. Dependences between variables in the DEAmodels are not explicitly specified; therefore, special optimization models are used to calculatethese indicators. Much attention is given in the scientific literature to the estimation of returns toscale. This paper describes and compares some of the best known methods for calculating returnsto scale. Computational experiments show that under certain conditions, the approach proposedby the authors has advantages over other methods. © 2022, Pleiades Publishing, Ltd.