EFFICIENCY AND RETURNS TO SCALE – A CONCEPT OF USING DETERMINISTIC APPROACH

In the paper the author considered estimation of efficiency, which measures the ability of the company to obtain the maximum output from given inputs. The analysis has been carried out by using deterministic method (on the example of the DEA method, Data Envelopment Analysis). The two-step procedure was proposed, namely the returns to scale were specified in the sample and, basing on that, the efficiency of individual enterprises was assessed. In the paper the data from the companies of a key food processing sector in Poland, namely the meat processing, was used. The analysis covered the period 2006–2011, the sample covered from 195 up to 210 enterprises (depending on the analyzed year).