Evaluating U.S. judicial district prosecutor performance using DEA: Are Disadvantaged Counties More Inefficient?

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-2009

Publication Source

European Journal of Law and Economics

Abstract

In this paper, we evaluate the efficiency of prosecutor office efficiency in the United States. Using multiple inputs and multiple outputs to characterize prosecutor office production, technical and scale efficiency are calculated for U.S. counties. Given the complex nature of service provision and potential heterogeneity based on judicial district size, we restrict our sample to those counties with populations between 100 and 500 thousand. Given the efficiency results, we also test whether efficiency is statistically related to median income and the percentage of minority population. The results suggest that prosecutor offices in more socio-economically disadvantages counties are more inefficient.

Inclusive pages

275–283

ISBN/ISSN

0929-1261

Comments

Permission documentation is on file.

Publisher

Springer

Volume

27

Issue

3

Peer Reviewed

yes


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