Grading Countries/Territories Using DEA Frontiers

Several approaches exist related to categorizing academic journals/institutions/countries into different levels. Most existing grading methods use either a weighted sum of quantitative indicators (including the case of one properly defined quantitative indicator) or quantified peer review results. An important issue of concern for science and technology management is the efficiency of resource utilization. In this paper we deal with this issue and use multi-level frontiers of data envelopment analysis (DEA) models to grade countries/territories. Research funding and numbers of researchers as used as inputs, while papers and citations are output variables. The research results show that using DEA frontiers we can grade countries/territories on six levels. These levels reflect the corresponding countries’ level of efficiency in S&T resource utilization. Furthermore, we use papers and citations as single outputs (with research funding and researchers as inputs) to show changes in country/territory level.