Concluding remarks
This entry has tried to grapple with the problem that public institutions serve a multitude of objectives that are difficult to establish and account for. The analysis is critical of studies which take the performance criteria from welfare economics.
Instead, it is suggested that the criteria of performance assessment have to be derived, first, from an analysis of the structure of the institution and the objectives one can possibly achieve with this structure; second, from an analysis of the revealed performance as documented by the institution itself; and third, from an analysis of the interplay between principal and agent, that is, the public authority to which an institution is accountable and the institution itself. The entry concluded with the outline of a stepwise procedure for such a performance analysis.References
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