Which governments are cost-effective (-ineffective)? (2021 update)

We look at the situation of 18 OECD countries. First, we construct an overall indicator of government effectiveness based on 14 elementary indicators relating to education, health, security, innovation, the labour market and poverty. We compare the indicators of government effectiveness built for each country with the cost of government: the weight of public spending in GDP and the size of public employment in the population.This is not the absolute effectiveness of government, but its cost effectiveness. According to this criterion, the countries where the government is most efficient are the Netherlands and Japan; the countries where the government is least efficient are Denmark, Finland, Sweden, France and Belgium. France’s public spending is 12 percentage points of GDP higher than the level commensurate with the effectiveness of its government, which is huge .