Abstract: According to the drawbacks of additive and multiplicative decomposition models in two-stage network data envelopment analysis (DEA), this paper proposes a novel approach to efficiency evaluation based on expected utility theory. Firstly, considering the internal relations between two stages, the expected efficiency for each stage is defined and calculated by Monte Carlo experiments. Then, by using multi-attribute utility function and DEA model without input, the overall efficiency of the system is obtained. Moreover, in order to expand the scope of application, the approach is extended to a generalized multi-stage network structure. Finally, the effectiveness and rationality of the proposed approach are verified by an empirical study about operational performance of listed commercial banks in China.
Keywords: data envelopment analysis(DEA); expected efficiency; Monte Carlo; multi-attribute utility theory