Fixed Cost Allocation Based on DEA Cross Efficiency Considering Semi-Additive Production Technology: An Application to Bank Branches

In the real world, situations frequently occur when we want to allocate a fixed cost between a set of decision-making units (DMUs) such as institutions, organizations. In this paper, we use the data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique to allocate fixed costs among DMUs. First, we introduce semi-additive production technology in DEA and present efficiency evaluation models in this technology. In estimating the frontier of this technology, in addition to the observed DMUs, the set of all aggregations of these DMUs are also used. In the following, we propose an interactive process for fixed cost allocation between DMUs in DEA based on the concept of cross-efficiency. We show that our proposed iterative approach is always feasible, and ensures that all DMUs become efficient after the fixed cost is allocated as an additional input measure. The cross-efficiency scores corresponding to all DMUs are improved at each stage of the interactive process. We also illustrate the proposed approach with a numerical example. The proposed approaches are demonstrated using an application of the fixed cost allocation problem for branches of commercial banks. Finally, we bring the results of the research.