Unlocking University Efficiency: A Bayesian Stochastic Frontier Analysis

García-Tórtola Zaira (), David Conesa (), Joan Crespo () and Emili Tortosa-Ausina
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García-Tórtola Zaira: Department of Economics, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain
David Conesa: Department of Statistics and Operational Research, Universidad de Valencia, Spain
Joan Crespo: Department of Economic Structure, Universidad de Valencia, Spain

No 2024/05, Working Papers from Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón (Spain)

Abstract: In this paper, we analyse the performance of the Spanish public university system over the 2010–2019 period, which was particularly turbulent due to the tight budget constraints imposed on universities. To disentangle the main sources of performance change, we adopt a dynamic approach by decomposing it into efficiency change (catching up) and technical change (shifts in the frontier). In contrast to many studies on Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), we opt for Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA), employing the ray production function proposed by Löthgren (1997) to account for the multiple-output nature of HEIs. Additionally, to offer a more detailed examination of uncertainty quantification, we conduct inference within the Bayesian paradigm. Broadly, results point to an overall positive performance change over the entire period, particularly for technical change during 2010–2014. However, there were notable discrepancies across universities, which could be unlocked with certain precision via the posterior distributions of performance and its components.

Keywords: efficiency; Bayesian; education; stochastic frontier; universities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C61 J24 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff
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