Benchmarking non-pharmacological policies from an efficient administration perspective: a panel DEA approach with strategic insights for the post-pandemic

PurposeThe recent increase in the number of infections and mortality rates in many regions has emphasized the cyclical nature of this pandemic, with new variants emerging constantly. Understanding what has been done by efficient administrations to contain the outbreak is essential while new immunization developments for the new variants are not available.Design/methodology/approachThis work adapts the traditional Banker, Charnes and Cooper (BCC) Variable Returns to Scale model for including panel data on the Brazilian Federal Government spending over the first pandemic months in Pernambuco to identify efficient municipalities and conduct a benchmark on the best practices, reactions and implications that can serve as a guide for the post-Covid recurrence era.FindingsThe results provide an interesting panorama of municipal response to the pandemic and some quantitative and qualitative prospects on potentials for improvements from the perspective of efficient and inefficient cities. Only one administration (Sao Bento do Una) was identified as efficient for the entire period. The authors' benchmark and discussion are focused on this municipality.Originality/valueThe authors believe this work has two innovative components. The first is a robust and systematic methodology integrating the advances in testing convexity and returns to scale in the construction of a production frontier based on panel data. The second is a discussion on what drives efficiency (benchmarking of best practices) in addition to how to quantitatively attain such efficiency prospects. To the best of the authors' knowledge, both methodological and empirical implications are original to the present manuscript.