A neutral DEA model for cross-efficiency evaluation and its extension

Cross-efficiency evaluation has long been suggested as an alternative method for ranking decision making units (DMUs) in data envelopment analysis (DEA). This paper proposes a neutral DEA model for cross-efficiency evaluation. Unlike the aggressive and benevolent formulations in cross-efficiency evaluation, the neutral DEA model determines one set of input and output weights for each DMU from its own point of view without being aggressive or benevolent to the other DMUs. As a result, the cross-efficiencies computed in this way are more neutral, neither aggressive nor benevolent. The neutral DEA model is then extended to a cross-weight evaluation, which seeks a common set of weights for all the DMUs. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the applications of the neutral DEA model and the cross-weight evaluation in DEA ranking.