Tijdschrift voor Economie en Management
Vol. LI, 3, 2006 “Advancing Public Sector Performance”

Introducing the special issue in honour of
Professor Dr. Wim Moesen

Guest editors L. CHERCHYE and T. VAN PUYENBROECK

Wim Moesen would single out conventions as primary examples of soft
institutions. One such commonsensible convention is that a collection of
scientific papers, published in someone’s honour, is not a haphazard
compilation. Rather, such articles must be related to a ‘unifying theme’ that
runs as a common thread through that particular person’s professional life.
Adhering to that custom was rather easy in this particular instance: this
special issue of the Tijdschrift voor Economie en Management deals, as Wim
Moesen has always done, with the central question how to assess and improve
the performance of government.
Phrased in such a concise manner, this theme may sound as a rather
down-to-earth preoccupation, as a shallow basis on which to build a long and
impressive career. But by no means is this how Wim himself approaches the
issue. His work is rooted in the deep conviction that government is indeed
there for the citizens, that better government implies more ‘value for money’

three main lines of research that can be used to classify his own work. First,
Wim has been concerned with defining the central role of the government
within an economy. Accordingly, much of his research has been devoted to
the measurement of public sector macro-performance, i.e. the aggregate
achievements at the level of a country or region as a whole. In a first step,
such an aggregation exercise requires the identification of the appropriate
performance criteria and the corresponding performance indicators. In a
subsequent step, this means aggregating the thus defined single-dimensional
performance indicators in a synthesizing, so-called “composite”, performance
indicator. Second, and closely related to this first research avenue, an
important part of Wim’s work has concentrated on the quantification of public
sector micro-performance; i.e., most notably, the productive efficiency
measurement of specific public service production units. The act of
measurement itself is rather technical, and must obey some methodological
rules. Here, Wim always kept an eye on the ultimate purpose of that act:
methodologies are good if they can establish a coherent basis for policy
improvement. Indeed, Wim surely went beyond measurement for its own
sake. This is evident if one looks at a third line of his research, also taken up
in this special issue, which deals with explaining public sector performance.
That is, what are the ultimate determinants of economic performance in
general, and public policy successes or failures in particular? In this respect,
Wim has put a main emphasis on the quality of institutions as an important
driver of economic prosperity.
This three-way categorization is ours, not his, and we are well aware
that it is a limited way of summarizing the vast spectrum of research subjects
that Wim has covered throughout his career. We could as well have said that
by writing on institutional aspects, their relation with the size of government
and with economic growth, models of bureaucracy, budgetary policy and
budgetary norms, public debt and debt management, privatisation, public
auditing and the search for best practices, social inclusion, local public

Italy, and who have collaborated with Wim on the development of composite
indicators, explore in their article to what extent such composite indicators are
‘useful’. As mentioned above, such a question epitomizes much of Wim’s
own work. Specifically, noting that composite indicators are (‘only’) capable
of aggregating multi-dimensional processes into simplified, stylized concepts,
these authors provide a qualified yes to the question whether these tools are
up to the task of underpinning the development of data based narratives for
political advocacy of the EU reform process as laid down in the Lisbon
agenda.
‘Advancing public sector performance’ is a concern that is certainly
not confined to public economics. At another faculty of Wim’s Alma Mater,
this field of study is indeed equally alive. Specifically within the field of
public administration, Geert Bouckaert is an internationally renowned expert
on public performance management. His article not only neatly summarizes
the current state-of-the-art –of the theory and practice– of public performance
management. Bouckaert rightly warns for the danger of vagueries, points at
possible undesirable side-effects of performance-oriented management, and
also indicates the main challenges ahead regarding the further implementation
of such management.
Bouckaert’s survey article also marks the transition to the second
part of this issue, in which the focus is shifted towards micro-assessments of
the public sector. The next two articles, by Claude Jeanrenaud and Mathieu
Vuilleumier (“Evaluating technical efficiency of Swiss consulates”) and
Laurens Cherchye, Bruno De Borger and Tom Van Puyenbroeck
(“Nonparametric tests of Optimizing Behaviour in Public Service Provision:
Methodology and an application to local public safety”), provide two
applications of the assessment of public sector productive efficiency. Both
papers use the ‘best practice frontier’ methodological framework that Wim
Moesen has used and advocated many times as well.
In 1990, Claude Jeanrenaud of the University of Neuchâtel,

Vanneste and Maret Veiner (“Exchange market pressure in the formerly
planned Central and Eastern European countries: the role of institutions”), fits
within the third line of Wim Moesen’s research as it has been classified
above. Specifically, it concentrates on the role of institutions as determinants
of economic performance.
André Van Poeck, Jacques Vanneste and Maret Veiner are all
members of the economics department of the University of Antwerp, to which
Wim himself has been associated for many years. André Van Poeck and Wim
Moesen have co-authored several introductory economics textbooks, and so
introduced the principles of economics to many generations of undergraduate
students. Jacques Vanneste is again a former PhD student of Wim, who has
shown a similar interest in the study of public sector performance. This
resulted in a number of joint publications. The article of Van Poeck, Vanneste
and Veiner focuses on how the institutional developments in the formerly
planned Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) impact on their
exchange markets. More specifically, these authors investigate whether
institutional reforms such as economic liberalization, improved corporate
governance, banking sector reform, improvements of rule of law and pushing
back corruption have affected tensions on the currencies of these countries.
Their results effectively confirm that low corruption, efficient banking
regulatory and supervisory systems and profound economic liberalization
significantly reduce exchange market pressure in the transition economies.
These findings are consistent with the more general thesis that good
institutions benefit the economic (policy) performance, which is actually a
basic ingredient of Wim Moesen’s own work on the topic.
To conclude, we hope that the next few articles in this issue provide
an adequate, albeit not fully representative, sampling of Wim Moesen’s many
research interests. In particular, we hope that Wim will enjoy this special
issue, and that the subsequent studies may provide inspiration for his own
future work.