Open AccessEfficiency analysis of Catalonia’s construction industry pre- and post-financial crisis: a data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach
Author(s) -
Claudette Procel
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
tec empresarial/tec empresarial
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1659-2395
pISSN - 1659-3359
DOI - 10.18845/te.v15i1.5587
Subject(s) - data envelopment analysis , catalan , financial crisis , recession , industrial organization , empirical research , business , economics , macroeconomics , statistics , mathematics , humanities , philosophy
By employing a non-parametric technique rooted in economic production theory—i.e., Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)—this study evaluates the efficiency level of construction businesses operating in the Spanish region of Catalonia. The empirical application considers a dataset including information for more than 1000 construction businesses from Catalonia during the period 2005-2016. The empirical results reveal that the efficiency level in the Catalan construction industry drastically fell during the period of economic downturn (2009-2012). Also, the findings show that efficiency in the industry improves after 2013; however, the speed of recovery is heterogeneous across businesses. A further analysis highlights that business size is a relevant factor explaining efficiency differences among the sampled businesses: efficiency is evidently lower in micro businesses compared to the figures reported for small and medium and large construction firms