Network, shared flow and multi-level DEA models: a critical review

In the last two decades, complex and detailed DEA models that consider the internal structure of DMUs have been proposed by several authors. This chapter describes the mathematical formulations, along with their main variants, extensions and applications, of three large and popular model families: network (with special emphasis on multi-stage), shared flow (also known as multi-component or multi-activity), and multi-level models. Each family is a different generalization of the same elementary internal structure.

In the last two decades, complex and detailed DEA models that consider the internal structure of DMUs have been proposed by several authors. This chapter describes the mathematical formulations, along with their main variants, extensions and applications, of three large and popular model families: network (with special emphasis on multi-stage), shared flow (also known as multi-component or multiactivity), and multi-level models. Each family is a different generalization of the same elementary internal structure. This review extends and updates the classification presented in Castelli et al.