This paper shows how scale efficiency can be measured from an arbitrary parametric hyperbolic distance function with multiple outputs and multiple inputs. It extends the methods introduced by Ray (J Product Anal 11:183–194, <CitationRef CitationID="CR8">1998</CitationRef>), and Balk (J Product Anal 15:159–183, <CitationRef CitationID="CR1">2001</CitationRef>) and Ray (<CitationRef CitationID="CR9">2003</CitationRef>)...</citationref></citationref></citationref>

This article finds that education and health spending has risen during International Monetary Fund (IMF)-supported programmes at a faster pace than in developing countries as a whole. The analysis is based on the most comprehensive dataset assembled thus far for this purpose, with data covering...