Economic crisis and public education. A productivity analysis using a Hicks-Moorsteen index

Juan Aparicio, Laura López-Torres and Daniel Santín

Economic Modelling, 2018, vol. 71, issue C, 34-44

Abstract: The economic crisis forced politicians to make public finances sustainable. The education sector was one of the most adversely affected by control of public expenditure. This paper analyzes the drivers causing productivity changes of especially vulnerable public schools during the crisis. We use the Hicks-Moorsteen index, which is a seldom applied methodology that leads to feasible results under variable returns to scale. To illustrate the benefits of this index, we use a sample of 298 Catalan public primary schools between 2009 (when budgetary constraints started) and 2014. The results reveal that during the crisis schools improved their total factor productivity by raising academic achievement despite cutbacks in resources. We also found that there was a strong convergence pattern during the financial crisis, driven by the catch-up process of some schools. The findings have important policy implications, suggesting that a monitoring system should be set up for use by policy makers.

Keywords: Productivity; Hicks-moorsteen; Convergence; Public schools; Economic crisis; Education; JEL classification: C14; C43; C61; C67; D24; H12; H52; I21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264999317310416
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:71:y:2018:i:c:p:34-44

DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2017.11.017

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Modelling is currently edited by S. Hall and P. Pauly

More articles in Economic Modelling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().