Public Provision and Performance: Contributions from Efficiency and Productivity Measurement

Governments are searching for possibilities to improve efficiency and reduce cost of the public sector services. Privatising, deregulation, changing property rights have become popular policy items in recent politics. Although there has been much progress in methodological issues and the availability of reliable data, there is still a huge gap between efficiency research and policy implementation of the results. The aim of this book is to bridge this gap. The book provides a summary of recent research, an overview of methods, an insight of factors affecting efficiency, an evaluation of the findings and possible policy recommendations. This aim is addressed by various case studies. The book is divided into six parts. Besides the general introductory and concluding chapters (part I and part VI), each chapter refers to a specific segment of the public sector. Part II addresses the performance of health care facilities. Part III analyzes the performance of educational service providers. Part IV contains studies of the performance of law enforcement agencies and part V provides analysis of the performance of regional service providers. These specific sectors account for the bulk of previous studies of efficiency and productivity in the public sector. By further including extensive literature overviews in each chapter, the volume creates a comprehensive picture of the state of the art of current research in this field.