Wildavsky, Aaron. "PBBS: The Political Economy of Efficiency," Public Interest, Summer 1967.

There was a day when the meaning of economic efficiency was reasonably dear. An objective met up with a technician. Efficiency consisted in meeting the objective at the lowest cost or in obtaining the maximum amount of the objective for a specified amount of resources. Let us call this “pure efficiency.” But the desirability of trying to achieve certain objectives may depend on the cost of achieving them. In this case the analyst (he has graduated from being a mere technician) alters the objective to suit the available resources. Where the objective was previously fixed, the analyst now creates a new one. Let us call this “mixed efficiency.”

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