What Can We Learn about Country Performance from Conditional Comparisons across Countries?

There have been many attempts to infer latent performance attributes of governments (or other institutions) from conditional comparisons that control for observed variables. Success in doing do could greatly improve government performance. The auth...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author:	Ravallion, Martin
Format:	Policy Research Working Paper
Language:	English en_US
Published:	World Bank, Washington, DC 2014
Subjects:	ADJUSTED INCOME AVERAGE INCOME AVERAGE INCOMES AVERAGE LEVEL BAD GROWTH COUNTRY LEVEL DEVELOPING COUNTRIES DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS DEVELOPMENT POLICY DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH ECONOMIC GROWTH ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES ECONOMIC REVIEW ECONOMISTS EMPIRICAL WORK ERROR TERM FUNCTIONAL FORM GINI INDEX GROWTH RATES HEALTH CARE HEALTH INDICATORS HOUSEHOLD INCOME HUMAN DEVELOPMENT HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORTS INCOME DISTRIBUTION INCOME INEQUALITY INCOME POVERTY INFANT MORTALITY LABOR MARKET LABOR MARKET POLICIES LABOR MARKET PROGRAMS LIFE EXPECTANCY LIVING STANDARDS MICRO DATA NUTRITION PAPERS POLICY DISCUSSIONS POLICY IMPLICATIONS POLICY RESEARCH POLICY VARIABLES POOR POOR AREAS POOR COUNTRIES POVERTY MEASURE POVERTY RATE POVERTY RATES POVERTY REDUCING POVERTY REDUCTION PUBLIC EXPENDITURES PUBLIC POLICIES PUBLIC SPENDING REDUCING POVERTY RURAL POVERTY SELECTION BIAS SOCIAL POLICIES SOCIAL SERVICES SOCIAL SPENDING
Online Access:	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2000/05/437674/can-learn-country-performance-conditional-comparisons-across-countries http://hdl.handle.net/10986/18847

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Summary:	There have been many attempts to infer latent performance attributes of governments (or other institutions) from conditional comparisons that control for observed variables. Success in doing do could greatly improve government performance. The author critically reviews the econometric foundations of the methods used. He argues that latent heterogeneity remains a fundamental, but unresolved problem. Locating a benchmark for measuring performance, adds a further problem. Current methods do not yield a consistent estimate of even the mean latent performance attribute. An assessment of country performance by these methods could well be wildly wrong.

What Can We Learn about Country Performance from Conditional Comparisons across Countries?

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