Evaluating the comparative performance of knowledge-based economies (KBEs)in ASEAN: a data envelopment analysis (DEA) application of additive efficiency

The objective of this paper is to measure the technical efficiencies of knowledge-based economies in the Association of South East Asian Nations Five (ASEAN-5), namely Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand plus South Korea using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). This technique allows the assessment of the efficiency of a firm, organization, country or region in converting its inputs to output variables. For each country in each knowledge dimension, the efficiency rating of two basic DEA models - CCR (Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes, 1978) and BCC (Banker, Charnes and Cooper, 1984) and one extension of basic DEA models; the Additive Model are calculated. The two years 1995 and 2010 are considered to assess the cross-section performance of KBE dimensions. Data are collected from World Development Indicators (WDI), World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) and ASEAN publications. Findings show that the most efficient countries in one referred year or other are Indonesia in the knowledge acquisition dimension, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand in the knowledge production dimension, Singapore in the knowledge distribution dimension and the Philippines and S. Korea in the knowledge utilization dimension. This paper provides empirical evidence to measure the comprehensive efficiency of KBEs that would allow governments to determine areas for greater investment in order to develop the KBE dimensions of their economies. This is the first study of its kind by applying DEA CCR, BCC and the Additive Model in ASEAN-5 considering all KBE dimensions