USING DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS TO SCREEN THE POSSIBILITY OF A FAIR GLOBALIZATION

The International Labor Office, an arm of the UN based in Geneva, has as its goal to promote opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity. Since 1999, the ILO has conducted a series of studies of the effects of globalization. In 2004, the organization posed the challenge of tempering the perceived effects of globalization, aiming for A Fair Globalization. Fair rules on trade and finance need to be put in place benefiting men and women in rich and poor countries alike. Using standard economic terms, A Fair Globalization may be seen as the output of a generalized input-output function, dependent upon variables of both economic performance and economic and social policy. Using data envelopment analysis, we fit a piece-wise linear frontier to observations for 72 countries from all continents. Inefficient countries reveal conditions of lacking fairness.