Measuring the efficiency of humanitarian aid

Erik Alda and Jose Cuesta

Economics Letters, 2019, vol. 183, issue C, -

Abstract: We do not know the extent to which billions of dollars in aid can save lives or prevent forced displacement globally. We propose the adaption of data envelopment analysis (DEA), a well-known nonparametric organizational performance method, to fill this critical gap in humanitarian assistance. Applying this new technique to 106 countries receiving aid between 2010 and 2016, we show that countries could improve their aid efficiency by an average of between 20 percent and 50 percent with respect to best performers. This tailored methodology, Humanitarian DEA, can be applied to monitor the efficiency of aid nationally and globally every year.

Keywords: Efficiency; Aid; Emergencies; Impacts; Data envelopment analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D61 O12 P47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176519303040
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:183:y:2019:i:c:19

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2019.108618

Access Statistics for this article

Economics Letters is currently edited by Economics Letters Editorial Office

More articles in Economics Letters from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().