Determining Efficiency of 15 OECD Countries Coping with Covid-19 using Data Envelopment Analysis after 2 Years of Pandemic

Abstract

Covid-19, emerged in Wuhan, a city of China, at the date of December 2019, it spread to the entire world soon and then by the World Health Organization (WHO) accepted as a pandemic. Today, still the coping with Covid-19 is the one of the significant topics of countries. In this study, the relative efficiencies of 15 OECD countries for coping with the pandemic is analyzed with Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Current health expenditure (% of GDP), Nurses and midwives (per 1 thousand people), Hospital beds (per 1 thousand people), Physicians (per 1 thousand people) variables used as inputs; Number of Total Cases (per 1 million people), Number of Deaths (per 1 million people) and Number of Tests (per 1 million people) variables used as outputs. Output oriented Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes (CCR) and Banker, Charnes and Cooper (BCC) DEA models are used, scale efficiency values are determined and potential improvement suggestions are given for inefficient countries. Austria, Mexico, South Korea, Spain and Türkiye are found to be both relative technical, total and scale efficient. It is also concluded that inefficient countries must use their input variables efficiently and number of Covid-19 tests is important for a country’s efficiency against Covid-19.