Evaluation of technical efficiency levels of social security expenditures in Turkey and EU countries: Data Envelopment Analysis applications

In this study, it was aimed to determine the efficiency levels of social security expenditures of Turkey and EU member states and to evaluate them by comparing productivity changes among themselves. In addition, it is aimed to determine the decision units that relatively inefficient countries should take as a reference in order to make them productive and to make evaluations regarding the optimal resource use in order to achieve efficiency. The study used data related to social security expenditures of Turkey and 27 EU member states between 2008 and 2016, and the effectiveness levels of the countries were measured using the input-oriented BCC and CCR model of the data envelopment analysis. In result of the analysis, according to the BCC model of data enveloping analysis, all countries except Belgium were at least once efficient. According to the CCR model, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Spain, France, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Slovenia, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom were found to be inefficient, while the remaining countries were efficient at least once. According to the BCC model results of data envelopment analysis, 18 countries were efficient in all periods studied, while 9 countries were efficient according to the CCR model. In terms of scale effectiveness, Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Turkey were seen to be scale-effective. Luxembourg has been found to have the lowest scale efficiency score in all years.