Models for the assessment of partial scale characteristics in polyhedral technologies

Abstract

Partial scale characteristics of efficient frontiers include the notions of partial scale efficiency, most productive scale size and returns to scale that are evaluated with respect to some selected subsets of inputs and outputs, while keeping the remaining inputs and outputs fixed. We show that, in any polyhedral technology, all such partial characteristics can be assessed by solving linear programs based on the appropriately specified partial cone extension of the technology. We obtain a general operational statement of such cone extensions and illustrate our results by an example.