ROBBINS, Mark D
Using data envelopment analysis to evaluate the performance of municipal of municipal bond issuers
- 2002
Evaluating the perfomance of state and local government debt management is problematic because a variety of factors simultaneously influence borrowing costs and because borrowing cost measures have not consistently included the costs of issuance. The authors of this article propose and demonstrate an approach to performance measurement in debt management using data envelopment analysis (DEA), with the internal financing rate as the output measure. DEA is used to construct the efficiency frontier for municipal bond sales in Oregon and to compare the information provided from these findings with that produced by a simple ranking of interest costs. Rankings are shown to be different, and the practical uses of the managerial information provided are noted