Survey on technical efficiency in higher education: A meta-fractional regression analysis

There has been remarkable growth in the number of studies using data envelopment analysis (DEA) in research on higher education. Heterogeneous DEA models have been applied in assessing the performance of higher education institutions (HEIs), and the multi-faceted production process of higher education has further motivated the extension and improvement of the DEA approach. The present study conducts a meta-regression analysis of 109 published DEA applications in higher education at different levels of analysis to provide a better understanding of the relationship between the efficiency results and the attributes of the studies implemented in different nations.     

Modelling the effect of national culture on countries’ innovation performances: A conditional full frontier approach

This paper provides empirical evidence of the link between countries’ cultural factors and innovation performance. By defining innovation process in a knowledge production framework it uses conditional and unconditional Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models together with data from the European Innovation Scoreboard for the year 2007 and Hofstede’s cultural indexes. In this way it models and measures the effect of cultural values on 25 European countries’ innovation efficiency levels. The empirical results reveal that national culture can impact countries’ innovation performance. Specifically, we find significant negative effects on countries’ innovation efficiency levels for countries with higher power distance and uncertainty avoidance values.     

A ‘technically level playing-field’ profit efficiency analysis of enforced competition between publicly funded institutions

The study demonstrates how recent advances in the data envelopment analysis (DEA) of profit efficiency, and in combining DEA and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to measure producer performance, can be used to obtain a ‘technically level playing-field’ profit efficiency performance measure. A three-stage analysis is used to provide an empirical investigation of public-sector universities facing regulatory pressures to attain both profit efficiency and output quality. Stage one employs directional distance function analysis to decompose DEA profit efficiency measures into technical and allocative components. As these performance measures incorporate the impacts of managerial inefficiency, the operating environment and luck (statistical noise), stage two applies SFA to total (radial and non-radial) slacks to obtain a degree of disentanglement from the latter two impacts. The stage-two results are used to define a common environment and common luck scenario, thus permitting university producers’ inputs to be adjusted so as to reflect operation within this more level playing-field scenario. Stage three recomputes the first-stage DEA for this scenario, to yield an (input-focused) ‘technically level playing-field’ measure of profit efficiency that unifies the regulatory financial audit and output-quality indicators in a single, best-practice-benchmarked, performance measure.     

Politics and institutions: European parliamentary technology assessment

This paper analyses, from an institutionalist perspective, the emergence, nature and ways in which parliamentary scientific and technological advice activities are carried out in different European countries. A diffusion process from the United Sates could be identified in the early times, but some local preconditions are also important for the adoption of these practices in Europe, as well as the existence of some political entrepreneurs willing to advance the initiatives within their respective political systems. We argue that the connection of technology assessment (TA) with the political process can only be understood if the former is regarded not only as an input in the decision-making process but also as a legitimising mechanism.Different models of arrangements of parliamentary TA (PTA) are identified, depending on the degree of inclusiveness of different actors in the TA process. The adaptation, consolidation and differential impact of these organizations are mediated by two factors: the capacity of PTA organizations to gain support, both inside and outside the Legislature, and their capacity to access decision makers in an environment of competition with other organizations that also produce TA. Models of PTA have both types of these capacities in differing degrees. It is argued that differences in the potential impact of TA activities in the different countries are to be analysed in the context of the rules of the political game and the types of incentives that TA organizations face. The degree of autonomy/dependence and exclusivity/nonexclusivity of the assessment for the parliaments are essential for understanding the diversity of impacts.     

Determinants of technical efficiency of crop and livestock farms in Poland

Poland, one of the candidate countries for European Union membership, is currently experiencing acute structural problems within its agriculture sector. This article analyses technical efficiency and its determinants for a panel of individual farms in Poland specialized in crop and livestock production in 2000. Technical efficiency is estimated with stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and confidence intervals are constructed. Determinants of inefficiency are also evaluated. The SFA results are compared with results using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). On average, livestock farms are more technically efficient than crop farms. For both specializations, the size–efficiency relationship is positive, that is large farms are more efficient. The SFA findings are generally supported by the DEA results. Soil quality and the degree of integration with downstream markets are highly important determinants of efficiency. The use of factor markets (land and labour) is important for crop farms, while livestock farms can rely on family labour and own land. Also, education is a constraint to efficiency particularly for crop farms.     

Influence of policy,operational and market conditions on seaport efficiency in newly emerging economies: the case of Vietnam

ABSTRACT

Located in Southeast Asia as one of the most dynamic economic regions in the world and close to north-south shipping routes, Vietnam’s seaports play a vital role in promoting its international trade and economic growth. And yet, most ports are small and owned by the public sector. Their performance is subject to various factors relating to government policy, operational and market conditions. Although the Government has been trying to improve the sector’s performance through corporatization, its corporatization model is unique in many ways compared with reform models in other countries. This study seeks to analyse the effects of government policy, operational and market conditions among other factors, on Vietnamese seaports’ efficiency. Double-bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA) and univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted using the data sample of 41 ports for years 2015 and 2016. The analysis results show that the factors of production, regional location and reform policy had a significant impact on port performance.     

Evaluating R&D performance of EU countries using categorical DEA

Over the coming decade, Research and Development (R&D) performance will be the key component of bringing innovation and the determinant of global competitiveness of nations. Therefore, this paper presents categorical Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for evaluating R&D performance of European Union (EU) countries. We utilise the output-oriented constant returns to scale (CRS) and variable returns to scale (VRS) DEA models with categorical data, namely, CAT-O-C and CAT-O-V models. In addition to DEA based framework, to examine the relationship between R&D performance and political-regulatory-economic situation of the countries; three research hypotheses are stated and their results are analysed. Policy implications about R&D activities can be derived for EU countries from the findings of this study.     

Technical efficiency measures for olive-growing farms in Crete, Greece

This study attempts to contribute to the productivity literature of the agriculture of developing countries by exploring the distribution of technical efficiency over time among olive-growing farms operating in the southern part of Greece—specifically, the island of Crete. A balanced panel data set during the period 1987–93 is utilized for the estimation of the stochastic production frontier. The results show decreasing efficiency for farms since 1987 and suggest the need for a development strategy to improve their economic performance in the context of expected major changes in the Common Agricultural Policy. A further result is that farm size, the farmer's education, the existence of an improvement plan, and land fragmentation are the most important factors explaining inter-farm variation in efficiency.     

Modeling the Education Supply Chain with Network DEA Model: The Case of Tunisia

Little has been done on network DEA in education, and nobody has attempted to model the whole education supply chain using network DEA. As such the contribution of the present paper is to evaluate the efficiency of Tunisian education supply chain with a network DEA developed by Kao and Hwang (Eur J Oper Res 185:418–429, 2008). The idea consists on subdividing the education system into three sub-processes, where, primary, secondary and tertiary education are linked by intermediate variables. Input variables of the whole education system are “the number of schools” and “the number of students enrolled in the first year of basic education”. Output generated from basic education “Promoted pupils from basic education” is the only input used by secondary education. The output variable “Graduates from secondary education” is then used by tertiary education to produce the output of the whole education system which is “Graduates from tertiary education”. The results of assessment show that most governorates have a lower efficiency scores in tertiary education compared to efficiency in basic and secondary education. The results of the efficiency scores ranking demonstrate an important similarity between the ranks of the whole education system efficiency and the tertiary education efficiency. This result confirms that the inefficiency of education in Tunisia is mainly due to the inefficiency of tertiary education.

     

National representation in supranational institutions: The case of the European Central Bank

Supranational institutions face an important trade-off when hiring personnel. On the one hand, hiring decisions are based, as in most organizations, on a candidate’s professional qualifications. On the other hand, supranational institutions often aim for broad national representation. Reviewing evidence from the European Central Bank, we show that nationality is indeed relevant for both hiring and decision-making. Specifically, we find a disproportionately narrow spread of national representation in the top management of the ECB. Further, there is evidence for the existence of national networks between adjacent management layers. Finally, monetary policy decisions seem to be linked to national representation in the core business areas of the ECB. Examining a sample of 27 European countries over the period from 1999 to 2008, we estimate Taylor rules for alternative sets of euro area aggregates derived from different weighting schemes of national macroeconomic data. Our results indicate that weights based on national representation in the mid-level management of the ECB’s core business areas best describe the central bank’s interest-rate setting behavior.     

Environmental factors affecting European and Central Asian health-systems’ bias-corrected efficiency

Health expenditures comprise a large part of national incomes, which explains the growing interest of government agencies in establishing efficient control and management policies in the current context of economic difficulties. One of the main problems in efficiency analysis is to determine the environmental variables that have an impact on the production process. In particular, employing data on the European and Central Asian health systems, the article demonstrates that bias corrected Data Envelopment Analysis is most appropriate measuring efficiency than traditional Data Envelopment Analysis. Bias correction, implies a higher potential resources reduction, affects the ranking of health systems and allows variables influencing efficiency which would be undiscovered with non-corrected estimation. The second stage determines that lifestyle factors, policy organization and location of countries affect the efficiency results and cause differences among the countries. The contribution of these results is particularly useful facing the decision making by governments. Their strategies should be oriented to implementing active policies to struggle against smoking and promoting health policies aimed at increasing the level of immunization in order to be more effective improving management efficiency.     

银行业市场结构、效率和绩效的相关性研究--基于上海地区银行业的考察

文章利用上海市银行业1999～2003年的相关数据,对该市银行业的市场结构、综合效率和经营绩效及其相互关系进行了实证研究.研究表明,上海市银行业是一个中等集中度的市场结构类型.利用DEA技术测定的银行业效率的结果显示,上海四大国有商业银行的整体综合效率要好于股份制商业银行,且股份制上市银行的综合效率对非上市银行不具有比较优势.此外,研究发现决定商业银行绩效水平的市场力假说和效率结构假说在上海银行业中都不成立,但是银行业的规模效率对银行绩效水平具有积极的作用.     

The transient and persistent efficiency of Italian and German universities: a stochastic frontier analysis

Despite measures on the European level to increase the compatibility between the higher education sectors, the recent literature exposes variations in their efficiencies. To gain insights into these differences, we split the efficiency term according to the two management levels each university is confronted with. We separate short-term and long-term efficiency while controlling for unobserved institution-specific heterogeneity. We argue that the first term reflects the efficiency of the individual universities working within the country, while the second term echoes the influence of the overall country-specific higher education structure. The cross-country comparison displays whether efficiency differences between countries are related to the individual performance of their universities or their higher education structure. This allows more purposeful policy recommendations and expands the literature regarding the efficiency of universities in a fundamental way. Choosing Italy and Germany as two important illustrative examples, we show that the Italian higher education sector exhibits a higher overall efficiency value. With the individual universities working at the upper bound of efficiency in both countries, the remaining inefficiency and the gap between the countries are caused by persistent, structural inefficiency. Future measures should hence aim at the country-specific structure and not solely at the activities of single universities.     

Budgeting for efficiency? A case study of the public K-12 education systems of Canada

In spite of the declining and uneven performance of Canadian students on the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests, little attention has been paid to whether provinces are allocating their education budgets to improve academic performance. This study uses a two-stage data envelope analysis (DEA) technique to estimate the degree to which education expenditures are efficiently allocated relative to achievement scores. We find that in these terms the overall cost-efficiency of the public K-12 education systems in the 10 provinces has deteriorated and that, in general, the provinces have become less able to allocate resources efficiently and use them in the most technically productive way. However, some provinces are more efficient than others. To gauge the extent to which performance measures, such as PISA scores, factor into budgeting decisions we interviewed 28 budget managers in 10 Canadian provinces and two territories, probing the criteria used to allocate education resources. The preponderant pattern of budgeting is described as an ‘increments-based-on-formula’ approach, one that is not particularly responsive to efficiency concerns but that often takes account of equity imperatives.     

ADMINISTRATIVE CHANGE IN THE EU: A CROSS‐COUNTRY EMPIRICAL STUDY ON THE CONTEXTUAL DETERMINANTS OF NPM REFORM RHETORIC

Framed within the paradigm of New Public Management (NPM), structural reforms in the EU aimed at modernizing the public administrations of Member States (MSs) have long since been a priority area of the EU's economic policy. Since the 1990s, these reforms have been sharply intensified across European countries with the declared purpose of enhancing economy, efficiency and effectiveness in their national public sectors’ organizations. In line with the European Commission's recent research initiatives in search for novel quantitative data on NPM in the EU, this paper studies European parties’ NPM reform rhetoric. More specifically, it investigates the MSs’ institutional, economic and political context within which parties have declared their intention of reforming national administrative systems. Thus, it sheds light on the MSs’ domestic factors that are associated with the diffusion of the NPM values across the political discourse of EU's national parties.     

Trade efficiency and economic development: evidence from a cross country comparison

Economic theory suggests that development is enhanced through income growth, which is driven through increased trade. However, the empirical evidence of such a relationship most of the times is proved to be weak. In this study we try to determine the factors influencing this relationship by measuring ‘trade efficiency’. Using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) window method for a sample of 16 OECD countries, we obtained the efficiency scores and the optimal output levels for the inefficient countries for a time period of 5 years under consideration. Results drawn from the broadly used ratio analysis were also compared to the results derived from the DEA model. Our empirical findings show that ‘trade efficient’ countries have clear characteristics like low-exchange rates for exports, low R&D intensity, high-value intra industry trade and positive impact of net trade on their gross domestic product.     

不同规模农户农业生产效率差异及影响因素研究——基于DEA-Tobit模型的实证分析

文章基于小麦主产区4个省份946个不同规模农户的调查数据,利用DEA模型和Tobit回归模型分析了小农户和家庭农场农业生产效率的影响机制。结果表明:家庭农场的农业生产效率明显高于小农户的农业生产效率,家庭农场的生产效率与经营规模呈倒"U"型变化特征;在影响因素方面,土地肥沃程度与农业技术指导对小农户和家庭农场的农业生产效率均有显著正向影响;家庭农场更倾向于通过提高受教育程度和增加单块耕地面积来提升农业生产效率;而小农户的农业生产效率对农户年龄和农户从事农作物种植年限呈现出较强的依赖性。基于此,建议有针对性地加大农业技术指导,适度扩大农业生产经营规模,加强小农户与新型农业经营主体之间的合作与联合,促进农业生产向高质量发展。     

An alternative demand indicator: the 'non-accelerating inflation rate of capacity utilization'

This article examines the usefulness of the NAIRCU, the ‘non-accelerating inflation rate of capacity utilization’ as a demand indicator of inflation for eight European countries. So far the NAIRCU has been estimated for the USA only, where it serves as a useful indicator for inflation. In most European countries, deviations from the equilibrium level of capacity utilization influence inflation significantly. Further, the results not only indicate that in more recent periods the NAIRCU has shifted upward, indicating higher efficiency of the production process, but also that confidence intervals have increased over time reducing the usefulness of the NAIRCU somewhat.     

Measuring the efficiency of health systems of OECD countries by data envelopment analysis

This study aims to assess the efficiency of health sectors of 34 OECD countries by employing input-oriented data envelopment analysis (DEA) method both under constant and variable returns to scale assumptions. In the analysis, the number of doctors, number of patient beds and health expenditure per capita were used as input variables and life expectancy at birth and infant mortality rate were used as outputs. At the first stage, DEA analysis was performed for 34 countries, and at the second stage outlier 8 countries were eliminated to form a more homogeneous group and to achieve more accurate results. 11 of the 26 countries were found to have efficient health systems, and there is room for efficiency improvements in health sector in the remaining 15 countries.