IMF Working Papers

What has happened to Sub-Regional Public Sector Efficiency in England since the Crisis?

By Samya Beidas-Strom

February 14, 2017

Download PDF

Preview Citation

Format: Chicago

Samya Beidas-Strom. What has happened to Sub-Regional Public Sector Efficiency in England since the Crisis?, (USA: International Monetary Fund, 2017) accessed October 8, 2024

Disclaimer: IMF Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to encourage debate. The views expressed in IMF Working Papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management.

Summary

This paper estimates public sector service efficiency in England at the sub-regional level, studying changes post crisis during the large fiscal consolidation effort. It finds that despite the overall spending cut (and some caveats owing to data availability), efficiency broadly improved across sectors, particularly in education. However, quality adjustments and other factors could have contributed (e.g., sector and technology-induced reforms). It also finds that sub-regions with the weakest initial levels of efficiency converged the most post crisis. These sub-regional changes in public sector efficiency are associated with changes in labor productivity. Finally, the paper finds that regional disparities in the productivity of public services have narrowed, especially in the education and health sectors, with education attainment, population density, private spending on high school education and class size being to be the most important factors explaining sub-regional variation since 2003.

Subject: Economic sectors, Education, Education spending, Expenditure, Health, Public sector

Keywords: DEA efficiency estimation, DEA regression, DEA result, DEA score, Education spending, Efficiency score, Fiscal consolidation effort, Global, Health output, Input-output pair, Post crisis, Public expenditure, Public sector, Public sector efficiency or productivity, Public spending cut, Simple average, Sub-regional fiscal federalism, WP

Publication Details

  • Pages:

    44

  • Volume:

    ---

  • DOI:

    ---

  • Issue:

    ---

  • Series:

    Working Paper No. 2017/036

  • Stock No:

    WPIEA2017036

  • ISBN:

    9781475578966

  • ISSN:

    1018-5941