Measuring sources of economic growth in OECD countries

Abstract

Growing socioeconomic inequalities and deepening polarization among and within nations indicate a major risk of political, social and economic instability. Policymakers need to deepen their awareness and understanding of the circumstances and find useful guidance and examples to inspire their effective qualitative and quantitative policies. This paper empirically investigates the relative dynamic socio-economic efficiency of thirty OECD countries using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methodology. As an extension to the basic output-oriented DEA models with variable returns-to-scale, window analysis is employed. The appropriate design of window length is also proposed in the study. In the first step, the relative efficiency of the countries was measured by four economic indicators. In the second step, four new indicators were added, covering social, institutional and environmental dimensions. It has been found that, in some cases, performance rankings change very significantly and that the overall relative performance of the OECD countries increases when the set of economic indicators is extended.