Public Spending Efficiency in the OECD: Benchmarking Health Care, Education, and General Administration

Richard Dutu and Sicari Patrizio ()
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Sicari Patrizio: Economics Department,OECD, 2 rue André Pascal, 75016Paris, France

Review of Economic Perspectives, 2020, vol. 20, issue 3, 253-280

Abstract: In many OECD countries, changes in demography and health conditions are putting pressure on public finance. To prevent further expansion of government spending as a percentage of GDP, public spending efficiency will need to be raised. This paper uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to assess the efficiency of welfare spending (normalized by the working-age population) in a sample of OECD countries around 2012, focussing on health care, secondary education, and general public services. The DEA model has a two input-one output structure, with at least one of the variables representing a composite indicator controlling for country-specific factors (socio-economic environment and lifestyle factors, for example). We find wide dispersion in efficiency measures across OECD countries and provide possible quantified improvements for both output and input efficiency.

Keywords: Administration; DEA; education; efficiency; health care; nonparametric; public spending (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H11 H51 H52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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https://doi.org/10.2478/revecp-2020-0013 (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Public Spending Efficiency in the OECD: Benchmarking Health Care, Education, and General Administration (2020)
Working Paper: Public Spending Efficiency in the OECD: Benchmarking Health Care, Education and General Administration (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vrs:reoecp:v:20:y:2020:i:3:p:253-280:n:1

DOI: 10.2478/revecp-2020-0013

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