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

IMF Working Papers, February 14, 2017

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

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Bibliographic details

• Authors: Samya Beidas-Strom
• Published: February 14, 2017
• Series: IMF Working Papers
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9781475578966.001

Overview and objective

• Estimates public sector service efficiency in England at the sub-regional level.
• Focuses on changes post crisis during the large fiscal consolidation effort.
• Uses DEA efficiency estimation, DEA regression, and DEA result/score approaches (keywords present in source).

Key findings

• Despite the overall spending cut, efficiency broadly improved across sectors, particularly in education.
• Quality adjustments and other factors could have contributed to measured efficiency improvements (e.g., sector and technology-induced reforms).
• Sub-regions with the weakest initial levels of efficiency converged the most post crisis.
• Sub-regional changes in public sector efficiency are associated with changes in labor productivity.
• Regional disparities in the productivity of public services have narrowed, especially in the education and health sectors.
• The most important factors explaining sub-regional variation since 2003 are:
  • education attainment
  • population density
  • private spending on high school education
  • class size

Methodological and caveat notes

• Analysis conducted at the sub-regional level; data availability imposes some caveats on interpretation.
• Results reported using DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) measures (DEA efficiency estimation, DEA regression, DEA score).
• Improvements in measured efficiency may reflect changes in quality, sectoral reforms, or technology, not only spending cuts.

Subjects and keywords

• Subject areas: Economic sectors, Education, Education spending, Expenditure, Health, Public sector.
• Keywords appearing in source: 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.

Content in this bundle

• What has happened to Sub-Regional Public Sector Efficiency in England since the Crisis?
  • What has happened to Sub-Regional Public Sector Efficiency in England since the Crisis? (Markdown version)
  • What has happened to Sub-Regional Public Sector Efficiency in England since the Crisis? (PDF)