efficiency, in economics and organizational analysis, a measure of the input a system requires to achieve a specified output. A system that uses few resources to achieve its goals is efficient, in contrast to one that wastes much of its input.
Efficiency is a favourite objective of economists and administrators, but not everyone agrees on its meaning. Claims of inefficiency are submitted regularly in many policy debates, but each participant believes that his or her own proposal is the most efficient. In all cases, the disputants agree that efficiency is desirable. Whatever the goals, they should be achieved with as little input or cost as necessary. When it comes to measuring efficiency or creating an efficient system, however, the consensus quickly evaporates. Judging means to ends is a difficult prospect, and arguments disguised as conflicts over efficiency are often deeper conflicts over appropriate goals, social systems, or views of human nature.
There is a fundamental disciplinary debate about the likelihood of efficiency in organizations, however. Economists generally believe that organizations are efficient; they rationally allocate resources and optimally respond to their environments. Sociologists often believe that organizations are merely effective; they aim for survival and often use suboptimal arrangements that satisfy the social needs of participants and surrounding institutions. This empirical debate about the likelihood of efficiency often creeps into the differing applications of the term.
In economic contexts, measuring efficiency means asking whether the monetary evaluation of the inputs used to produce some goal are the minimal possible costs associated with achieving that goal. If something is called inefficient, it means that the goal could have been reached with less cost or that the goal could have been better achieved (in some monetarily measurable fashion) with the same costs. Economists assume that costs and benefits will be measured in some currency, but the proper weighting of costs and benefits is left to another debate. This notion is more specifically measured via the concept of x-efficiency, which is defined as the degree to which a group of inputs achieves the maximal level of outputs possible with those inputs. Market theory predicts that all firms will be x-efficient under perfect competition, because competitors would drive x-inefficient firms out of business over long periods.
Common theories in social welfare economics use more specific types of efficiency to evaluate allocation systems. A system is called Pareto optimal if no exchange can be made that will make one person better off without making someone else worse off. Unequal allocations are typically still Pareto optimal because those endowed with resources would lose something if their wealth was redistributed. A system is called Kaldor-Hicks efficient if resources are put in the hands of those that value them the most, measured by whether one person could theoretically compensate another for the same resources at a cost that would be worth it to them but worth more than the traded resources to the seller. This criterion is one way to think about allocative efficiency, or maximizing the aggregate value of a resource allocation. Economists will evaluate potential changes based on whether the net benefit of resources increases as the resources are put to use by all individuals.
Other precise notions of efficiency are used in many different contexts. In statistics, efficiency measures the extent to which a mathematical estimator of some unknown value measures that value with the minimal variance that any possible unbiased estimator could achieve. In several policy areas, government agencies and private organizations measure progress by using specific measures of efficiency. Fuel efficiency in automobiles, for example, compares the gas required to go a certain distance. Electrical efficiency, in parallel, compares the power created by a system and the power it consumes. Additional measures of specific notions of efficiency are created frequently. All are ratios of output for a given input, but the measurements and objectives differ.
Ann P. Bartel, Ownership Versus Environment: Disentangling the Sources of Public Sector Inefficiency (2000); Jens Beckert, Beyond the Market: The Social Foundations of Economic Efficiency (2002); Robert Kuttner, The Economic Illusion: False Choices Between Prosperity and Social Justice (1987); Deborah A. Stone, Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making (2002).
Matt Grossman