How costly are the public sector ineffiencies? An integrated theoretical framework for its welfare assessment.

This paper provides a theoretical framework which integrates the conventional methodology for measuring the productive efficiency and the monetary assessment of social welfare changes associated with public sector performance. Two equivalent measures of social welfare changes generated by an improvement (or worsening) in productive efficiency are deduced using duality theory. The first one is obtained from the cost function, while the second one arises directly from the production function. Moreover, the paper induces the application of the theoretical framework proposed to empirical analysis.