Performance Measurement of Global Cities: Combination of a Stepwise Improvement Model with an SE Model

Abstract

This chapter aims to provide an empirical contribution to the rising literature on the relative performance and benchmarking of large cities in a competitive world. On the basis of a recent detailed database on many achievement criteria of 35 major cities in the world, it seeks to arrive at a relative performance ranking of these cities by using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). A novel element is the use of a new type of “Super-Efficiency DEA” to identify unambiguously the high performers in the group of world cities investigated. We also introduce an adjusted DEA model, emerging from a blend of a DFM and a context-dependent (CD) model, namely, a Stepwise Improvement model. This model can provide a stepwise efficiency-improvement projection to provide more practical and feasible solutions for realistic circumstances and requirements in an efficiency-improvement projection. In this chapter, we also make a new contribution to DEA analysis by combining a Super-Efficiency (SE) DEA with the Stepwise Improvement model. The above mentioned stepwise-projection model is next applied to a performance analysis in the context of an efficiency-improvement plan for inefficient global cities.