Computing confidence intervals for output-oriented DEA models: an application to agricultural research in Brazil

We define and model the research production at Embrapa, the major Brazilian institution responsible for applied agricultural research. The main theoretical framework is Data Envelopment Analysis – DEA. We explore the economic interpretation and the statistical properties of these models to compute confidence intervals for output oriented efficiency measurements, based on a parametric flexible model, defined by the truncated normal distribution. These results provide a better insight on the efficiency classification and allow comparison among the DMUs involved in the evaluation process taking into account inefficiency random variation.