Performance evaluation of the Chinese high-tech industry: A two-stage DEA approach with feedback and shared resource

Abstract

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>The operational process of high-tech industry can be separated into a research and development stage (RDS) and a commercialization stage (CS). Within this, the research employees are shared by both stages, and part of the economic output of the CS becomes a feedback factor and continuously flows back to the RDS. Using this framework, this study establishes cooperative and non-cooperative two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) models to explore the efficiencies of regional high-tech industries in China. The proposed approach can calculate the overall efficiency and stage efficiencies simultaneously. Based on empirical data of high-tech industries in 29 regions of China from 2012 to 2016, it is concluded that (1) a harmony exists between the RDS and the CS in the cooperative case, while a disharmony happens between the RDS and CS in the non-cooperative case; (2) there exist distinct geographic characteristics regarding the stage inefficiencies of these regional high-tech industries.</p>