Measuring the efficiency of European education systems by combining Data Envelopment Analysis and Multiple-Criteria Evaluation

Tommaso Agasisti (), Giuseppe Munda and Ralph Hippe

Journal of Productivity Analysis, 2019, vol. 51, issue 2, No 2, 105-124

Abstract: Abstract Education is considered an important factor of economic growth, employment and social inclusion. However, the economic crisis has put the need to achieve educational goals in the most efficient way ever more to the fore. The main objective of this paper is to assess the spending efficiency of European compulsory educational systems, creating a ranking of countries based on the efficiency scores of their systems using a number of standard variables from the literature. To this end, we also present a methodological innovation that combines Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) with discrete Multiple Criteria Evaluation (MCE), two methods that we consider complementary if used for providing a performance analysis. Moreover, both methods identify a set of common variables which are associated with higher levels of efficiency in educational systems (e.g. some characteristics of teachers, the stock of adults’ human capital and lower expenditures per student). The results show that findings using DEA are largely confirmed by MCE.

Keywords: Compulsory Education; Human Capital; Efficiency Analysis; Data Envelopment Analysis; Multiple-Criteria Evaluation; NAIADE method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C14 C61 H52 I21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11123-019-00549-6

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