University of Sistan and Balouchestan International Journal of Business and Development Studies 2538-3302 18 1 2026 06 01 Public sector performance and public spending efficiency: An international comparative analysis using the DEA approach on a panel of 40 countries 10114 10.22111/ijbds.2026.56059.2350 EN Binafou FASSA Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics, Business and Management Sciences, University of Bejaia, Bejaia, Algeria Rafika ZIDAT Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics, Business and Management Sciences, University of Bejaia, Bejaia, Algeria Abdellatif NAIT-CHABANE Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics, Business and Management Sciences, University of Bejaia, Bejaia, Algeria Journal Article 2026 07 16 Objective: This article evaluates the efficiency of public expenditure allocation to optimize the overall performance of the public sector. Conducted on a panel of forty countries stratified by income level, this study highlights the crucial dimension of expenditure quality. This issue, which remains marginally explored in recent empirical literature, takes on a particular urgency in a context of structural and perpetual growth of global public budgets.<br /><br />Methods: Methodological rigor rests on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a non-parametric approach highly suitable for estimating relative technical efficiency scores from annual data covering the 2015-2025 period. Furthermore, the integration of the Malmquist productivity index captures the dynamic trajectory of public sector performance and disentangles efficiency variations from technological shifts.<br /><br />Results: Empirical estimations reveal substantial technical inefficiency over the entire period, characterized by a disconnect between the hierarchy of scores and countries' income levels. Counterintuitively, middle-income economies, particularly those in the lower-middle bracket, display a better average optimization of their budgetary resources compared to high-income countries. The latter suffer from diminishing marginal returns, attributable to the relative hypertrophy of their public sector.<br /><br />Conclusions: The study advocates for a strategic realignment and a structural reconfiguration of budgetary allocation rather than quantitative expansion for high and middle-income countries. For low-income economies, strengthening institutional quality proves imperative to guarantee increased resilience against exogenous macroeconomic shocks.