Multi-Criteria Assessment of Public Rail Companies

Abstract

The achievements of ten African public rail companies are compared with each other using the multi-criteria methods ELECTRE I, PROMOTHEE II and JUDGES. The 25 first-level criteria retained are first grouped into 8 families, each capturing a second-level objective. The efficiency of the service is assessed by a technical-economic evaluation function grouping the first 4 families. Its efficiency is measured by an evaluation function involving the other 4 families made up of traditional financial ratios that are likely to capture the management balance and the origin of financial resources. The authors conduct longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses of the data by comparing the results generated by ELECTRE and PROMETHEE. The JUDGES software successively shows the tree of correlations observed between the 8 families of criteria, and the rank distributions of firms according to 8 families. From a methodological point of view, this work is a variant of ELECTRE I and checks the relevance of multi-criteria methods in terms of ranking the performance of public companies.