Effectiveness analysis of quality achievements for university Departments of Economics

Abstract

When university Departments are under pressure to improve the assessed quality of their research and teaching in several different directions simultaneously, questions arise as to the nature of the corresponding feasible set and the shape of its frontier. When quality is judged by reference to grades whose precise thresholds are subject to stochastic uncertainties, both convex and nonconvex regions of the frontier of the feasible set may be present. The appropriateness of deploying standard empirical techniques of frontier estimation is then called into question in evaluating the relative effectiveness of individual Departments and their scope for improvements. The empirical results of frontier estimation, here applied to UK university Departments of Economics, are shown to be sensitive to the choice of nonparametric frontier technique deployed, with Free Disposal Hull analysis providing an alternative estimation technique that can allow for both convex and nonconvex regions of the possibility frontier. Issues of the endogeneity of the resources available to Departments are also raised in this applied context, with a need to incorporate into the effectiveness analysis the potential feedback effects of improved research and teaching quality upon the achievement possibility set.

Applications of Production Economics in Education

“…as the typical unit of analysis in such studies: of 223 papers relating to efficiency in the education context over the period 1977 to 2015, 147 are at the organisation level (with 89 relating to HEIs and 58 to schools); 44 focus on the funding district, county or city level; while 9 studies are at the level of the country, and 23 at the level of the individual student. A number of these studies are of note because they focus on a particular discipline or department (Colbert et al 2000;Kao and Liu 2000;Casu et al 2005;Giménez and Martínez 2006;Kao and Hung 2008;Dehnokhalaji et al 2010;Aziz et al 2013;Selim and Bursalioglu 2013;Mayston 2014;Sîrbu et al 2016), or a support service (Moreno and Tadepalli 2002;Kao and Hung 2003;Casu and Thanassoulis 2006;Ray and Jeon 2008;Simon et al 2011). In this section we take a brief look at the studies undertaken at individual, funding area, and national level analyses to see what additional information they provide, and what challenges arise, in the context of production economics.…”

An analysis of the efficiency of public expenditure on education in the Municipalities of the State of Amazonas from 2013 to 2017

“…The authors also identified that the standard input used in the literature refers to the expenses with education, being observed in about 50% of the articles in the sample. Of these, the following works stand out: Agasisti (2014), focusing on the educational institutions of the countries of the European Union; Aristovnik and Obadić (2014) in the educational system of Slovenia and Croatia; Blackburn, Brennan, and Ruggiero (2014) in Australian primary and secondary schools; Brennan, Haelermans and Ruggiero (2014), in dutch schools; Johnson and Ruggiero (2014), in Ohio/USA school districts; and Mayston (2014), in the economics departments of the University of the United Kingdom.…”

Nonconvexity in Production and Cost Functions: An Exploratory and Selective Review

“…For instance, Stroobants and Bouckaert (2014) compare libraries in the Flemish region and report substantial differences between convex and nonconvex results for three specifications (though no statistical tests are reported). As another example, Mayston (2014) evaluates UK economics departments and finds substantial differences at the sample level (though again no statistical tests are reported). Cesaroni, Kerstens, and Van de Woestyne (2017, p. 582-583) report on the decomposition OT E Λ (x, y) = T E Λ (x, y) • SCE Λ (x, y) for five secondary data sets.…”