DEA and Activity Planning under Asymmetric Information

The productivity analysis literature has traditionally focused on the evaluation of past performances. In this paper, we consider the post productivity analysis problem of deciding which production plans to choose in the future given information from a productivity analysis. In particular, we demonstrate that Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has an important role to play in the reallocation game following a normal productivity analysis. DEA estimates reduce the information rents an agent can extract by “claiming” high costs for the least reduced or most expanded activity. We also examine how to optimally combine DEA estimates with other information in a planning context, including preference information, ex-ante cost reports and ex-post cost data.