Addressing current socio-economic crises strains public budgets and may threaten fiscal sustainability. Particularly in the welfare sector, where high expenditures meet poor controllability, efficient resource usage is essential to ensure future governments’ capability to act while alleviating current problems. Consequently, this paper asks: why are some countries more efficient in translating social expenditure into welfare outcomes? To answer this question, it is argued that efficiency is a matter of institutional structures and their vertical policy-process integration (VPI): efficiency depends on institutional structures’ capability to (1) ensure policymakers’ responsibility and to (2) provide coordinated feedback, thus pushing for considerate and informed resource use. Analysing the effect of VPI on the relationship between welfare efforts and social outcomes in 21 OECD countries over three decades, the results show that VPI can not only turn ‘less’ into ‘more’, but it also compensates for performance losses in the face of spending cuts.

解决当前的社会经济危机会给公共预算带来压力，并可能威胁财政可持续性。特别是在福利部门，高支出且可控性差，有效利用资源对于确保未来政府在缓解当前问题的同时采取行动的能力至关重要。因此，本文提出以下问题：为什么一些国家在将社会支出转化为福利成果方面效率更高？为了回答这个问题，有人认为效率是制度结构及其垂直政策流程整合（VPI）的问题：效率取决于制度结构（1）确保政策制定者的责任和（2）提供协调反馈的能力，从而推动周到和知情的资源使用。分析了 30 年来 VPI 对 21 个 OECD 国家福利努力与社会成果之间关系的影响，结果表明，VPI 不仅可以变“少”为“多”，而且还可以弥补面临的绩效损失。削减开支。