In measuring aggregate"social efficiency"

Martin Ravallion

No 3166, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Cross-country comparisons of social indicators controlling for income and/or social spending have been widely used to measure and explain"social efficiency"analogously to"technical efficiency"in production. The author argues that these methods are clouded in ambiguities about what exactly is being measured. Standard methods of measuring technical efficiency require assumptions that seem unlikely to hold for social indicators. In the context of a simple parametric model of life expectancy, conditions are identified under which there will be a systematic pattern of bias in estimates of efficient health spending.

Keywords: Environmental Economics&Policies; Labor Policies; Economic Theory&Research; Public Health Promotion; Health Monitoring&Evaluation; Health Economics&Finance; Inequality; Environmental Economics&Policies; Economic Theory&Research; Health Monitoring&Evaluation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-11-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Related works:
Journal Article: On Measuring Aggregate "Social Efficiency." (2005)
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