Efficiency of publicly-traded medical device companies in Taiwan - an analysis using window-DEA

Owing to the limitations of the data collected, this study has applied window-DEA to estimate the managerial efficiency of medical device companies in Taiwan. Six publicly-traded medical device companies were recruited for this study over the 2005-2014 period. The results show that Excelsior, the most efficient company, has the potential to further improve its average efficiency by 14.5%, and SVBI, the worst company, has the potential to further improve its average efficiency by 92.6%. The average efficiency improvement potential of these companies ranged from 51.5% (2011) to 68.4% (2008) during the 2005- 2014 period. In addition, we found that the exchange rate for the U.S. and Germany exerted significant impacts on the efficiency of these medical device companies in Taiwan. The managerial efficiency increased by 1.727% when the U.S. dollar exchange rate increased by 1% and the efficiency increased 1.697% when the Deutsche mark exchange rate decreased by 1%.