The Korea Local Administration Review

This study measures the operational efficiency and technology gap of 12 localpublic agencies financed by Jeollabuk provincial government from 2009 through2013 with the variant radial measure model, analyzes scale efficiency and returnsto scale, and then suggests policy and academic implications as well as efficienttarget values for outputs. Technology gap is measured by dividing group frontierefficiency by metafrontier efficiency. Analytic results are summarized as follows.First, the group efficiency of public agencies has tended to be higher from 2011and there are considerable differences among those agencies. Second,metafrontier efficiency has a falling tendency. Third, technology gap has inclinedto grow larger since 2011. Fourth, the scale efficiencies of public agencies areall inefficient. Fifth, 11 public agencies operate in an area of increasing returnsto scale, whereas one is carried on in a domain of decreasing returns to scale.Finally, when some output has both negative and positive values, operationalefficiency needs to be analyzed by using the variant radial measure model.
□ Keywords: local public agencies, operational efficiency, variant radial measure,metafrontier efficiency, technology gap