Zastosowanie metody granicznej analizy danych do oceny efektywności gospodarowania w leśnictwie i przemyśle drzewnym

The paper presents the literature review concerning the general assumptions of the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and its applications in forest management and wood industry evaluation. So far, efficiency evaluation in forestry sector was carried out using mostly the ratio analysis only. The DEA approach, which was developed in the 1970s, is based on the mathematical programming algorithm and gives more opportunities to analyze efficiency in forestry sector. We describe the main steps of DEA and possible options for the analysis. It also discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the method applications. We also present the most significant papers concerning DEA application in forest management and wood−based industry. As far as forest management is regarded, DEA was used for evaluating forest offices, administration and institutions and optimizing forestry operations performed by both private and state−owned companies. In case of wood−based industry, the method was used mostly for evaluating efficiency of sawmills and pulp mills. Most of the research in this field was carried out in the United States and Canada. DEA was applied to measure efficiency in forest management in Poland only recently, which should be considered as a good step towards improvement of research quality in this field in Poland and should provide comprehensive results of forest management efficiency evaluation. The method should be used more widely to evaluate efficiency of various aspects of forestry and wood−based industry in Poland.