Measuring the efficiency of humanitarian aid

We do not know the extent to which billions of dollars in aid can save lives or prevent forced displacement globally. We propose the adaption of data envelopment analysis (DEA), a well-known nonparametric organizational performance method, to fill this critical gap in humanitarian assistance. Applying this new technique to 106 countries receiving aid between 2010 and 2016, we show that countries could improve their aid efficiency by an average of between 20 percent and 50 percent with respect to best performers. This tailored methodology, Humanitarian DEA, can be applied to monitor the efficiency of aid nationally and globally every year. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.