Economic efficiency of public secondary education expenditure

How different are developed and developing countries

Bibliographic Data

ID6166853
AuthorsJuliana Arias (0000-0002-8961-9023), Juliana Arias Ciro, Alejandro Torres García
Year2018
Issue80
Pages119-154
Publication date2018-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueRevista Desarrollo y Sociedad (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0120-3584 • E-ISSN: 1900-7760
PublisherUniversidad de los Andes (PUBLISHER • VE)
DOI10.13043/dys.80.4
OpenAlexW2784016647
LanguageEN
References cited19

This study measures the efficiency of public secondary education expenditure in 37 developing and developed countries using a two-step semi-parametric DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) methodology. We first implement two cross-country frontier models for the 2012-2015 period: one using a physical input (i.e., teacher-pupil ratio) and one using monetary inputs (i.e., government and private expenditure per secondary student as a percentage of GDP). These results are corrected by the effects of GDP per capita and adult educational attainment as non-discretionary inputs. We obtain five important results: 1) developed and developing countries are similar in terms of the education production process due to the peers used in the non-parametric estimation of relative efficiency; 2) developing countries could increase their enrolment rates and PISA scores by approximately 22% and 21%, respectively, by maintaining the same teacher-pupil ratios and public-private spending levels; 3) Australia, Belgium, Finland, and Japan are efficient countries in the two frontier models; 4) robust empirical evidence indicates that both income and parental educational attainment negatively affect efficiency in both models; and 5) the physical frontier model significantly favours developing countries, bringing them closer to the efficiency frontier; however, it negatively affects developed countries

Data envelopment analysis · Demographic economics · Developing country · Economic growth · Economics · Educational attainment · Estimation · Frontier · Geography · Macroeconomics · Per capita · Production–possibility frontier · Productivity · Public expenditure · Public finance · Statistics · Demography · Economic Growth and Productivity · Efficiency Analysis Using DEA · Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth

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