In recent decades, rankings of states on virtually every basis have proliferated. Prominent among these rankings have been those that attempt to measure the economic/business environment of states. These rankings tend to be an indexing based on many types of sometimes unrelated data rendering the rankings of questionable meaning. This paper uses Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to provide rankings of state economic performance. By using DEA, we develop rankings that are systematic and have a meaningful interpretation. © 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.