The German excellence initiative and efficiency change among universities, 2001-2011

Bastian Gawellek and Marco Sunder

No 142, Working Papers from University of Leipzig, Faculty of Economics and Management Science

Abstract: The "Excellence Initiative" is a prestigious third-party funding program for German universities, organized as a research contest. We investigate whether universities in this program (or that prepared an application) had different trends in terms of productivity and technical efficiency than universities that did not apply for the program, albeit these dimensions were not the target of the program. While universities became more efficient if the extra funding through the program is included, we do not find a substantially positive effect that extends beyond this funding. The evidence even suggests that applicants suffered a drop in efficiency at the time of applying. All this does not rule out, however, that research-oriented universities jointly gained productivity through increased competition between them.

Keywords: Efficiency; Malmquist index; German Research Foundation; DFG (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-eff and nep-eur
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:leiwps:142

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