Abstract:

The Latin American region is strongly affected by global trends which test the ability of companies to efficiently transform inputs into outputs and succeed in international competition on the world market. This article aims to identify the company's input inefficiencies in a sample of emerging companies in the region and further the analysis of barriers for business in Latin America in the period before the economic crisis (2006) and during the crisis (2010). For our analysis we used data envelopment analysis (DEA), which is considered as a powerful tool for measuring efficiency of units and exhibits some positives compared using the standard approaches. The analysis will focus on companies operating in manufacturing and determine their technical efficiency, respectively revealing inefficiencies in the transformation of material, labor and energy from input to output in the form of sales and investments. The findings from the two years 2006 and 2010 will allow us to further identify factors associated with the ability of companies to survive in the market during the period of economic fluctuations.