INTEGRATING EXPERT JUDGMENTS INTO THE PROCESS OF MEASURING THE EFFICIENCY OF THE NATIONAL ECONOMY: DEA-AHP APPROACH

Abstract

The paper measures the efficiency of the national economy of Republic of Serbia, in the period 2007-2017 year, marked by the global financial crisis and natural disasters that caused catastrophic consequences. First, the DEA method was applied, and then expert assessments were integrated into the model using the AHP method, thus overcoming the problem of irrelevance of individual variables. The results showed that the introduction of additional restrictions, based on expert judgments, for the weighting coefficients of the input variables affected the reduction of technical efficiency in the observed period compared to the baseline model, but that in both cases in 2007 the national economy was technically efficient. Robustness analysis of the obtained efficiency values was performed using bootstrap DEA, thus confirming the consistency of the results.