Efficiency of European Universities: A Comparison of Peers

Lars Herberholz and Berthold U. Wigger

No 8044, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: The European higher education landscape has become increasingly integrated causing competition among universities that is no longer bound to national borders. In view of this development, the present paper investigates the relative efficiency of 450 European universities between 2011 and 2014. The novelty of our approach lies in its extended coverage of university outputs and in the thorough peer-group selection process that accounts for high diversity in subject profiles. More specifically, assignment to peer-groups builds on proximity in subject space to ensure valid comparisons between universities. Exploring potential efficiency drivers, we uncover considerable effect heterogeneity between subject clusters, which is indicative of distinct technologies and calls for carefully designed policy measures. Yet institutional size and the ability to seek external funding are largely identified to be primary efficiency drivers.

Keywords: university efficiency; peer selection; data envelopment analysis; clustering (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H52 I23 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff and nep-eur
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp8044.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ces:ceswps:_8044

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().