Public policy

Psychological intervention

Efficient frontier

Microeconomics

Portfolio

Psychiatry

Economics

Computer science

Risk analysis (engineering)

Management science

Business

Systematic review

Public sector

Psychology

Frontier

Policy analysis

Political science

Public economics

Nonparametric statistics

Econometrics

Artificial intelligence

Financial economics

MEDLINE

Intervention (counseling)

Medicine

Economy

Economic growth

Perspective (graphical)

Production (economics)

Stochastic frontier analysis

International Transactions in Operational Research

This paper provides a systematic literature review of studies investigating the effect of an intervention on the efficiency of a decision‐making unit, when efficiency is computed using nonparametric frontier approaches. This paper offers a guide for future research by identifying patterns in (1) the fields of application, (2) applied efficiency models, and (3) analysis of efficiency determinants. Our findings indicate that, despite the prominent role of frontier techniques in the analysis of public sector performances and the importance of the effectiveness and the policy perspective, these two approaches have long been kept separate. Nevertheless, the combination of efficiency and effectiveness is fundamental to evaluate public interventions and to detect inefficiencies at the policy level, especially in key sectors such as education, health, and environment.

Policy evaluation and efficiency: a systematic literature review