In the social sciences, refers to the effectiveness with which a social benefit reaches its intended beneficiaries. When most of the cost of a particular social good is absorbed by intermediaries, such as scalpers and profiteers, distributional efficiency is low.
The state-owned auditorium hands out a fixed number of free tickets to students to promote the arts, but nearly all of them sell the tickets to scalpers for the money. It's very poor distributional efficiency.
by abu yahya July 11, 2008