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

_IMF Working Papers, February 14, 2017_

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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

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### 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.

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- **What has happened to Sub-Regional Public Sector Efficiency in England since the Crisis?**
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_Source: https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2017/02/14/what-has-happened-to-sub-regional-public-sector-efficiency-in-england-since-the-crisis-44664_