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Tijdschrift voor Economie en Management Vol. LI, 3, 2006 “Advancing Public Sector Performance” Introducing the special issue in honour of Professor Dr. Wim Moesen Guest editors L. CHERCHYE and T. VAN PUYENBROECK Wim Moesen would single out conventions as primary examples of soft institutions. One such commonsensible convention is that a collection of scientific papers, published in someone’s honour, is not a haphazard compilation. Rather, such articles must be related to a ‘unifying theme’ that runs as a common thread through that particular person’s professional life. Adhering to that custom was rather easy in this particular instance: this special issue of the Tijdschrift voor Economie en Management deals, as Wim Moesen has always done, with the central question how to assess and improve the performance of government. Phrased in such a concise manner, this theme may sound as a rather down-to-earth preoccupation, as a shallow basis on which to build a long and impressive career. But by no means is this how Wim himself approaches the issue. His work is rooted in the deep conviction that government is indeed there for the citizens, that better government implies more ‘value for money’ for these citizens, and so, ultimately, that any way in which the performance of government can be enhanced helps to increase citizens’ welfare. In short, the government is merely a servant. And although it is only an educated guess, we dare to add that Wim personally went one step further along this line of thinking: if government, as any institution, is indeed a contrivance with instrumental value for society, we in turn may not escape the civic duty to try and make that government better. We should impose standards of excellence on it; we must permanently answer the question how government can be improved in being at our service. Laurens Cherchye Catholic University of Leuven Center for Economic Studies, Leuven and Flemish Fund for Scientific Research (FWO-V), Brussels Tom Van Puyenbroeck European University College Brussels (EHSAL), Brussels In fact, we think that it is the same sense of civic duty which led him to take up some positions as policy advisor in various ‘real-life’ committees, and to provide occasional comments in the media on the state of our (national, regional, local) governments’ public finances and those who administer them. Even when it comes to his much appreciated teaching activities, we would not be surprised to discover that he was driven by yet the same motivation. For, being well-versed in the classics, Wim Moesen surely knows Aristotle’s aphorism that “the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.” Government is of course a powerful servant, as it serves us in multiple ways. ‘Focusing’ on the performance of government is therefore, to some extent, a misnomer. Wim Moesen indeed studied various aspects of this versatile agent. Within the general theme of this issue, we can distinguish three main lines of research that can be used to classify his own work. First, Wim has been concerned with defining the central role of the government within an economy. Accordingly, much of his research has been devoted to the measurement of public sector macro-performance, i.e. the aggregate achievements at the level of a country or region as a whole. In a first step, such an aggregation exercise requires the identification of the appropriate performance criteria and the corresponding performance indicators. In a subsequent step, this means aggregating the thus defined single-dimensional performance indicators in a synthesizing, so-called “composite”, performance indicator. Second, and closely related to this first research avenue, an important part of Wim’s work has concentrated on the quantification of public sector micro-performance; i.e., most notably, the productive efficiency measurement of specific public service production units. The act of measurement itself is rather technical, and must obey some methodological rules. Here, Wim always kept an eye on the ultimate purpose of that act: methodologies are good if they can establish a coherent basis for policy improvement. Indeed, Wim surely went beyond measurement for its own sake. This is evident if one looks at a third line of his research, also taken up in this special issue, which deals with explaining public sector performance. That is, what are the ultimate determinants of economic performance in general, and public policy successes or failures in particular? In this respect, Wim has put a main emphasis on the quality of institutions as an important driver of economic prosperity. This three-way categorization is ours, not his, and we are well aware that it is a limited way of summarizing the vast spectrum of research subjects that Wim has covered throughout his career. We could as well have said that by writing on institutional aspects, their relation with the size of government and with economic growth, models of bureaucracy, budgetary policy and budgetary norms, public debt and debt management, privatisation, public auditing and the search for best practices, social inclusion, local public finances, the quality of a trustworthy government, , he covered as good as any chapter that one finds in a public finance textbook. Indeed, he is the co- author of one such textbook, as many generations of Flemish students and policy-makers know. Alternatively, we could have pointed at the international journals (European Economic Review, European Journal of Law and Economics, Journal of Common Market Studies, European Economy, Public Choice, Der Öffentlichen Sektor, ), national journals, and books in which his texts appeared. But, for better or for worse, we will use the above categorization of Wim’s research to classify the six papers that follow in this issue. The first three papers, by Herman Van Rompuy (“Lessen uit dertig jaar openbare financiënpraktijk”), Andrea Saltelli, Guiseppe Munda and Michela Nardo (“From complexity to multidimensionality: the role of composite indicators for advocacy of EU reform”) and Geert Bouckaert (“Prestaties en prestatiemanagement in de publieke sector”), deal with the role of the government and the general assessment of public sector performance. The authors are either prime policy-makers themselves or prime witnesses of and important advisors to actual policy-making. Just as Wim, they bear on the public debate, and they bear on it by virtue of the quality of their arguments. Herman Van Rompuy, minister of state, MP, is evidently extremely well-positioned to provide an assessment of Belgium’s federal and regional budgetary policy over the last decades. Distilled from his long life in the political trenches, he conveys to the reader the lessons which he has learned regarding practical public finance policies. The resulting text may rightly be considered as ‘a young person’s guide to the actual do’s and don’ts in budgetary policy’, so nicely mirroring the approach Wim Moesen is often keen to take when explaining inherently complex issues to a wide audience. Andrea Saltelli, Guiseppe Munda and Michela Nardo, who currently are all working at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy, and who have collaborated with Wim on the development of composite indicators, explore in their article to what extent such composite indicators are ‘useful’. As mentioned above, such a question epitomizes much of Wim’s own work. Specifically, noting that composite indicators are (‘only’) capable of aggregating multi-dimensional processes into simplified, stylized concepts, these authors provide a qualified yes to the question whether these tools are up to the task of underpinning the development of data based narratives for political advocacy of the EU reform process as laid down in the Lisbon agenda. ‘Advancing public sector performance’ is a concern that is certainly not confined to public economics. At another faculty of Wim’s Alma Mater, this field of study is indeed equally alive. Specifically within the field of public administration, Geert Bouckaert is an internationally renowned expert on public performance management. His article not only neatly summarizes the current state-of-the-art –of the theory and practice– of public performance management. Bouckaert rightly warns for the danger of vagueries, points at possible undesirable side-effects of performance-oriented management, and also indicates the main challenges ahead regarding the further implementation of such management. Bouckaert’s survey article also marks the transition to the second part of this issue, in which the focus is shifted towards micro-assessments of the public sector. The next two articles, by Claude Jeanrenaud and Mathieu Vuilleumier (“Evaluating technical efficiency of Swiss consulates”) and Laurens Cherchye, Bruno De Borger and Tom Van Puyenbroeck (“Nonparametric tests of Optimizing Behaviour in Public Service Provision: Methodology and an application to local public safety”), provide two applications of the assessment of public sector productive efficiency. Both papers use the ‘best practice frontier’ methodological framework that Wim Moesen has used and advocated many times as well. In 1990, Claude Jeanrenaud of the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and Wim Moesen co-edited the book ‘Gérer l'austérité budgétaire’ (Paris, Economica). This joint product points at the fact that both share similar research interests. The text contained in this issue, by Jeanrenaud and Vuilleumier provides further evidence for this. Just as Wim Moesen has studied e.g. the productive performance of municipalities or of tax collecting offices, Jeanrenaud and Vuilleumier compare the relative performances of a sample of 28 Swiss consular posts in Europe, North America and Asia using an input-oriented data envelopment analysis (DEA) model. The aim of this study is to compute for each post the minimum amount of input – Swiss employees and locally hired staff and to help the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to control the efficiency of worldwide staff deployment. They also compare the results of their DEA analysis with those of the DFA’s audit unit, which employs a different methodology. Bruno De Borger has been a colleague of Wim Moesen at the University of Antwerp for many years. They have been working and publishing together on the topic of public sector productivity measurement, in particular using the DEA methodology. Laurens Cherchye and Tom Van Puyenbroeck are two former PhD students of Wim Moesen, and still enjoy collaborating with him on a regular basis. In their article, Cherchye, De Borger and Van Puyenbroeck suggest a DEA-related methodology that models public sector behaviour as “shadow” cost minimizing behaviour for given, pre-specified public policy objectives. Using data of 546 municipal policy forces, they find that this model provides a good fit of observed public sector behaviour. In line with Wim Moesen’s study of the subject, this so- called “positive” approach to public sector evaluation recognizes the specificity of the production process (as compared to the more typical private sector production processes) in defining the performance standards for public sector production units. These first five articles focus on the definition and measurement of public sector performance. The final article, by André Van Poeck, Jacques Vanneste and Maret Veiner (“Exchange market pressure in the formerly planned Central and Eastern European countries: the role of institutions”), fits within the third line of Wim Moesen’s research as it has been classified above. Specifically, it concentrates on the role of institutions as determinants of economic performance. André Van Poeck, Jacques Vanneste and Maret Veiner are all members of the economics department of the University of Antwerp, to which Wim himself has been associated for many years. André Van Poeck and Wim Moesen have co-authored several introductory economics textbooks, and so introduced the principles of economics to many generations of undergraduate students. Jacques Vanneste is again a former PhD student of Wim, who has shown a similar interest in the study of public sector performance. This resulted in a number of joint publications. The article of Van Poeck, Vanneste and Veiner focuses on how the institutional developments in the formerly planned Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) impact on their exchange markets. More specifically, these authors investigate whether institutional reforms such as economic liberalization, improved corporate governance, banking sector reform, improvements of rule of law and pushing back corruption have affected tensions on the currencies of these countries. Their results effectively confirm that low corruption, efficient banking regulatory and supervisory systems and profound economic liberalization significantly reduce exchange market pressure in the transition economies. These findings are consistent with the more general thesis that good institutions benefit the economic (policy) performance, which is actually a basic ingredient of Wim Moesen’s own work on the topic. To conclude, we hope that the next few articles in this issue provide an adequate, albeit not fully representative, sampling of Wim Moesen’s many research interests. In particular, we hope that Wim will enjoy this special issue, and that the subsequent studies may provide inspiration for his own future work. . state-of-the-art –of the theory and practice– of public performance management. Bouckaert rightly warns for the danger of vagueries, points at possible undesirable side-effects of performance-oriented. a subsequent step, this means aggregating the thus defined single-dimensional performance indicators in a synthesizing, so-called “composite”, performance indicator. Second, and closely related. first research avenue, an important part of Wim’s work has concentrated on the quantification of public sector micro-performance; i.e., most notably, the productive efficiency measurement of specific