This paper examines ethnically differentiated preferences for neighbourhood ethnic composition among homeowners in the Netherlands. Borrowing from price hedonic theory, it tests a fully nonparametric empirical model of housing choice. We exploit rich neighbourhood-level administrative data...

This paper investigates the influence of ethnic composition and school mobility at the primary school-level on the propensity to drop out of high school. Using rich school and neighbourhood administrative data, we observe that (i) frequent school movers have a 2.6 times higher likelihood of...

Environmental factors add complexity to the comparison between specific activities or entire entities. Decision making units with an inferior performance are tempted to invoke that their organization is different from the others in the data set. By reinterpreting and extending the metafrontier...

This paper proposes a fully nonparametric framework to estimate relative efficiency of entities while accounting for a mixed set of continuous and discrete (both ordered and unordered) exogenous variables. Using robust partial frontier techniques, the probabilistic and conditional...

The Dutch drinking water sector experienced two drastic changes over the last 10 years. Firstly, in 1997, the sector association started with a voluntary benchmarking aimed to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the sector. Secondly, merger activity arose. This paper develops a tailored...

School absenteeism (or truancy) may be a signal of an ongoing process of student attrition that eventually leads to early school leaving. This article estimates how unauthorized school absenteeism accelerates the dropout decision. In particular, the timing of the dropout decision of truants is...

This paper examines which configuration of teaching activities maximizes student performance. For this purpose a nonparametric efficiency model is formulated that accounts for (1) self-selection of students and teachers in better schools and (2) complementary teaching activities. The analysis...

Various policy measures have been taken in industrialized countries to reduce school dropout rates. This paper first examines the relationship between truancy and school dropout. Using fixed effects regressions and controlling for truancy peer group effects, we observe that truancy (measured as...

Direct and indirect standardization procedures aim at comparing differences in health or differences in health care expenditures between subgroups of the population after controlling for observable morbidity differences. There is a close analogy between this problem and the issue of risk...

We present a nonparametric approach for the equity and efficiency evaluation of (private and public) primary schools in Flanders. First, we use a nonparametric (Data Envelopment Analysis) model that is specially tailored to assess educational efficiency at the pupil level. The model accounts for...