Effects of Competition in University Systems : Theoretical Reflections and Empirical Evidence from Italy

This paper deals with the reforming processes in higher education (HE) from centralized systems towards more competitive ones. In particular, I discuss these issues referring to the Italian case, and the market-like mechanisms introduced in it during 1990s and 2000s.The focus of the paper is in analysing the effects of the increasing competition on performance of universities. For this purpose, I develop a theoretical model, moving from the framework of Yardstick Competition (YC), to describe the functioning of a competition model based on comparing performances of institutions. Then, I apply this model using data from the Italian university system.The results suggest that an increasingly competitive environment effectively improves the universities' performance, which is also influenced by other factors, namely by the characteristics of the institutions themselves and of their students, and by the resources available.These preliminary results argue for deeper theoretical effort to (1) find better indicators of universities' performance and to (2) precisely model their determinants