When production functions are estimated as frontier functions, the deviations from the frontier can be interpreted as individual inefficiency estimates. Unfortunately, it has recently been shown that efficiency differences across individuals are very often statistically insignificant. In this...

One of the main motivations for productivity analysis is to assess the scope for overall improvements in the output possibilities of individual producers. At times of fiscal and government budgetary pressures, attention focuses particularly on the output potential of public service providers and...

This paper applies a data envelopment analysis (DEA) method to assess technical efficiency of both private and public universities in Italy. Moving from the traditional context where inputs and outputs are assumed to be non-negative, a directional distance function approach has been applied in...

Applying Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to real-world public policy issues can raise many interesting complications beyond those considered in standard models of DEA. One of these complications arises if the funding levels of public service providers, and their ability to attract and retain...

The efficiency of universities is attracting increased interest, with most studies comparing the performance between different universities. However, the within-university variation is largely overlooked in the literature. Using data envelopment analysis this paper identifies heterogeneity in...

This paper studies the relationship between university institutional autonomy (both formal and informal) and their performance and efficiency using multi-stage empirical methodology. First, we measure an “autonomy-in-use” index, and then we employ Data Envelopment Analysis in order to...

To create their rankings, university-ranking agencies usually combine multiple performance measures into a composite index. However, both rankings and index scores are sensitive to the weights assigned to performance measures. This paper uses a stochastic dominance efficiency methodology to...

Higher education (HE) is a significant factor in a country's economic prosperity and plays a vital role in addressing sustainability issues and actively promoting sustainable development. While many EU member countries have well-developed education systems in terms of rankings and SDGs'...

The paper aims to: a) estimate the research efficiency scores of Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) in India, b) compare efficiencies in research and teaching according to characteristics like ownership, specialisation of courses and age and c) estimate the group efficiencies of HEIs...

This paper uses data envelopment analys is to investigate the extent to which universities in the United States have undergone productivity and efficiency changes, partly due to managerial performance, during the 2005-09 academic years. Using panel data for 133 research and doctoral...