L'analisi dell'efficienza nell'ambito dell'approccio FDH. Un'estensione e un'applicazione per gli ospedali di zona.

This work deals with the non-parametic analysis of efficiency. We propose an extension of the Free Disposal Hull (FDH) approach in order to allow for the presence of input or output slacks in measuring technical efficiency. These slacks are weighted according to the gap between the input (or output) vector of an inefficient produce and the input (or output) vector of the respective dominating observation. Applying both the original and the corrected FDH (FDH-C) to the Italian zone hospitals suggests that consistent and systematic differences in the efficiency scores can be actually obtained. As a consequence of these changes in the efficiency scores, the application of FDH-C can lead to substantial alterations of the efficiency ranking obtained with the traditional FDH, implying that the algorithm here proposed has some practical relevance. Finally, there actually are cases in which an inefficient producer is dominated by different observations in FDH and FDH-C.