Population density and regional welfare efficiency

Halkos, George and Tzeremes, Nickolaos (2011): Population density and regional welfare efficiency.

Abstract

This paper demonstrates an evaluation of welfare policies and regional allocation of public investment using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Specifically, the efficiency of the welfare policies of the Greek prefectures for the census years of 1980, 1990 and 2000 are compared and analyzed. The paper using bootstrap techniques on unconditional and conditional full frontier applications determines whether the government investments have been used efficiently by the local authorities in order to stimulate regional welfare among the Greek prefectures. Our empirical results indicate that there are major welfare inefficiencies among the prefectures over the three census years. The analysis reveals that the population density among the Greek prefectures hasn’t been taken into account in regional welfare planning over the years. In addition, the paper demonstrates empirically how the new advances in DEA analysis can be incorporated into different stages of regional planning investment and evaluation. In addition, the impact of external factors can be directly measured and evaluated accordingly.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Regional development; Welfare policies; Conditional DEA; Bootstrap techniques; Kernel density estimation
• Subjects: O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development > O18 - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis ; Housing ; Infrastructure; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C0 - General > C02 - Mathematical Methods; P - Economic Systems > P2 - Socialist Systems and Transitional Economies > P25 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics

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