The aim of this article is to measure the efficiency of the professional soccer teams that play in the Spanish First Division in their activity of converting attacking moves during the match into sporting success. The timeline of the study is the three seasons from 1998 to 2001. To that end, we apply the data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology, taking as input variables the players used, attacking moves, the minutes of possession of the ball, and the shots and headers; as output, we considered the number of points achieved. Our main conclusion is that the efficient teams in the activity analyzed do not always correspond with those that finished highest in the league at the end of the season.
Anderson, T. R.,& Sharp, G. P. (1997). A new measure of baseball batters using DEA. Annals of Operations Research, 73, 141-151.
2.
Banker, R. D., Charnes, A., & Cooper, W. W. (1984). Some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis. Management Science, 30(9), 1078-1092.
3.
Berg, S. A., Førsund, F. R.,& Jansen, E. S. (1989). Bank output measurement and the construction of best practice frontiers. Working paper 1989/6. Norges Bank.
4.
Carmichael, F., & Thomas, D. (1995, September). Production and efficiency in team sports: An investigation of rugby league football. Applied Economics, 27(9), 859-869.
5.
Carmichael, F., Thomas, D.,& Ward, R. (2000, January-February). Team performance: The case of English premiership football. Managerial and Decision Economics, 21(1), 31-45.
6.
Charnes, A., Cooper, W. W., & Rhodes, E. (1981). Evaluating program and managerial efficiency: An application of data envelopment analysis to program follow through. Management Science, 27(6), 668-697.
7.
Dawson, P., Dobson, S., & Gerrard, B. (2000a, September). Estimating coaching efficiency in professional team sports: Evidence from English association football. Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 47(4), 399-421.
8.
Dawson, P., Dobson, S., & Gerrard, B. (2000b, November). Stochastic frontiers and the temporal structure of managerial efficiency in English soccer. Journal of Sports Economics, 1(4), 341-362.
9.
Fandel, G. (1991). Theory of production and cost. Berline: Springer-Verlag.
10.
Färe, R., Grosskopf, S., & Logan, J. (1985). The relative performance of publicly-owned and privatelyowned electric utilities. Journal of Public Economics, 26(1), 89-106.
11.
Farrell, M. J. (1957). The measurement of productive efficiency. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 120(3), 253-281.
12.
Fizel, J. L., & D’Itri, M. P. (1997, June). Managerial efficiency, managerial succession and organizational performance. Mangerial and Decision Economics, 18(4), 295-308.
13.
Førsund, F. R., Lovell, C. A. K., & Schmidt, P. (1980). A survey of frontier production functions and of their relationship to efficiency measurement. Journal of Econometrics, 13, 5-25.
14.
Grifell, E., Prior, D., & Salas, V. (1992, September). Eficiencia de empresa y eficiencia de planta en los modelos frontera no paramétricos: Aplicación a las cajas de ahorros en España, 1989-1990. Paper presented at the Congress VIII Jornadas de Economìa Industrial, Madrid, Spain.
15.
Hadley, L., Poitras, M., Ruggiero, J.,& Knowles, S. (2000). Performance evaluation of National Football League teams. Managerial and Decision Economics, 21, 63-70.
16.
Hausman, W. J., & Neufeld, J. L. (1991, August). Property rights versus public spirit: Ownership and efficiency of V.S. electric utilities prior to rate-of-return regulation. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 73(3), 414-423.
17.
Hofler, R. A., & Payne, J. E. (1997, August). Measuring efficiency in the National Basketball Association. Economic Letters, 55(2), 293-299.
18.
Ley, E. (1991). Eficiencia productiva: Un estudio aplicado al sector hospitalario. Investigaciones Económicas, 2nd period, 15(1), 71-88.
19.
Mazur, M. J. (1994). Evaluating the relative efficiency of baseball players. In A. Charnes, W. W. Cooper, A. Y. Lewin,& L. M. Seiford (Eds.), Data envelopment analysis: Theory, methodology and application(pp. 369-391). Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
20.
Prior, D. (1991, September). Los modelos frontera en la evaluación de la productividad. Paper presented at the I Congreso Nacional de ACEDE, Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, Spain.
21.
Schofield, J. A. (1988, February). Production functions in the sports industry: An empirical analysis of professional cricket. Applied Economics, 20(2), 177-193.
22.
Scully, G. W. (1994, September-October). Managerial efficiency and survivability in professional team sports. Managerial and Decision Economics, 15(5), 403-411.
23.
Seitz, W. D. (1971). Productive efficiency in the steam electric generating industry. Journal of Political Economy, 79, 878-886.
24.
Sueyoshi, T., Ohnishi, K., & Kinase, Y. (1999, June). A benchmark approach for baseball evaluation. European Journal of Operational Research, 15(3), 429-448.
25.
Zak, T. A., Huang, C. J.,& Siegfried, J. J. (1979). Production efficiency: The case of professional basketball. Journal of Business, 52(3), 379-392.
