Back to the Future: Does the use of information and communication technology enhance the performance of public historical archives?

Is innovation in ICT valuable for the efficiency of Italian museums?

“…The analysis of technical efficiency of museums has developed remarkably in recent years, and is characterized by a growing use of the frontier techniques (for recent reviews, see: Basso et al, 2018;Guccio et al, 2020a). However, this literature mostly neglects the relationship between ICT advancement and efficiency of cultural institutions (Guccio et al, 2020b). This study aims at contributing to fill this gap by investigating the effects of ICT applications on the technical efficiency of Italian state-owned museums using a two-stage approach: in the first stage, the analysis assesses the ability of museums to utilize resources efficiently for the production of outputs via a bootstrapped DEA (Simar & Wilson, 2000); in the second stage, it evaluates the impact of technological innovation on the estimated technical efficiency, using a boostrap truncated approach (Simar & Wilson, 2007).…”

Urban public libraries: Performance analysis using dynamic-network-DEA

“…Following Simar and Wilson [16], we posit a truncated bootstrap regression (algorithm 1) taking the overall efficiency outcomes and efficiency by stages of the DNDEA model as a reference. This model is relevant because it allows us to account for serial correlation between the DEA-based efficiency scores, and it has been widely applied in second-stage regression models to estimate the influence of external factors on the efficiency ratios of several institutions [23,26,63]. The appropriateness of the method depends also on the compliance with the condition of separability between the inputs-outputs space and the contextual variables although, as already pointed out, given the sample size it is virtually impossible to reject non-separability.…”

“…Under these premises, evaluations have also been carried out of the performance of museums [23], archives [24], and dance companies in the area of performing arts [25]. Likewise, numerous studies have emerged aimed at gauging what effect variables outside the production function have on cultural institutions' level of efficiency, applied to museums [23], archives [26], and cultural heritage agencies [27].…”

“…Few works, however, have addressed the dynamic perspective of efficiency. Exceptions include the studies by Pignataro [18] and Del Barrio-Tellado and Herrero-Prieto [22] who construct Malmquist indicators for productivity growth in samples of museums, and Guccio et al [26], who apply Window-DEA to assess how efficiency evolves and what impact the introduction of websites has on the productivity of public archives in Italy. To the best of our knowledge, in the field of cultural institutions there are still no applications of DNDEA models which bring together in a single model the time dependency restrictions and production interrelation of a production function.…”

La cultura como factor de progreso social y desarrollo urbano: Aplicaciones de economía de la cultura a la ciudad de Medellín, Colombia

“…Este modelo permite desglosar las diferentes actividades realizadas en la entidad en distintas etapas, sin obviar los efectos que una actividad desarrollada previamente pueda tener sobre una posterior. Por otra parte, los modelos Data Envelopment Analysis aplicados tradicionalmente para evaluar la eficiencia de instituciones culturales se han planteado habitualmente desde una perspectiva estática(Guccio et al 2018; Del Barrio Tellado y Herrero Prieto 2019), en el sentido de que, si bien algunos de ellos han tratado de estudiar la evolución de la eficiencia medida a lo largo de un periodo temporal de varios años (Del Barrio Tellado yHerrero Prieto 2014;Guccio et al 2020), generalmente no han considerado el hecho de que decisiones tomadas en un periodo pueden afectar también a los resultados de eficiencia de periodos posteriores(De Carvalho et al 2012; Stroobants y Bouckaert 2014; Emrouznejad y Yang 2018). De este modo, con el modelo Dynamic Network Data Envelopment Analysis se logra incluir estos aspectos facilitando tanto la evaluación inter-temporal de la eficiencia como el rendimiento comparado de las distintas etapas de la función de producción de las bibliotecas.…”