IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/tjorxx/v70y2019i9p1522-1537.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A unified productivity-performance approach applied to secondary schools

Author

Listed:
  • Laurens Cherchye
  • Kristof De Witte
  • Sergio Perelman

Abstract

We introduce a novel diagnostic tool to improve the performance of public services. We propose a method to compute performance/productivity ratios, which can be applied as soon as data on production units' outcomes and resources are available. Assuming outcome improvement as the main objective in a public services context, these ratios have an intuitive interpretation: values below unity indicate that better outcomes can be attained through weaker resource constraints (pointing at scarcity of resources) and, conversely, values above unity indicate that better outcomes can be achieved with the given resources (pointing at unexploited production capacity). We demonstrate the practical usefulness of our methodology through an application to secondary schools, where we account for outlier behaviour and environmental effects by using a robust nonparametric estimation method. Our results indicate that in most cases schools' performance improvement is a matter of unexploited production capacity, while scarcity of resources is a lesser issue.

Suggested Citation

  • Laurens Cherchye & Kristof De Witte & Sergio Perelman, 2019. "A unified productivity-performance approach applied to secondary schools," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 70(9), pages 1522-1537, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:tjorxx:v:70:y:2019:i:9:p:1522-1537
    DOI: 10.1080/01605682.2018.1489351
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01605682.2018.1489351
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/01605682.2018.1489351?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zohreh Moghaddas & Alireza Amirteimoori & Reza Kazemi Matin, 2022. "Selective proportionality and integer-valued data in DEA: an application to performance evaluation of high schools," Operational Research, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 3435-3459, September.
    2. Agasisti, Tommaso & de Oliveira Ribeiro, Celma & Montemor, Daniel Sanches, 2022. "The efficiency of Brazilian elementary public schools," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    3. Juan Aparicio & Sergio Perelman & Daniel Santín, 2022. "Comparing the evolution of productivity and performance gaps in education systems through DEA: an application to Latin American countries," Operational Research, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 1443-1477, April.
    4. Stylianos Gr. Margaritis & Constantinos P. Tsamadias & Elias E. Argyropoulos, 2022. "Investigating the Relative Efficiency and Productivity Change of Upper Secondary Schools: the Case of Schools in the Region of Central Greece," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 13(1), pages 128-160, March.
    5. D'Inverno, Giovanna & Moesen, Wim & De Witte, Kristof, 2022. "Local government size and service level provision. Evidence from conditional non-parametric analysis," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    6. Giménez, Víctor & Prior, Diego & Thieme, Claudio & Tortosa-Ausina, Emili, 2024. "International comparisons of COVID-19 pandemic management: What can be learned from activity analysis techniques?," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    7. D’Inverno, Giovanna & Smet, Mike & De Witte, Kristof, 2021. "Impact evaluation in a multi-input multi-output setting: Evidence on the effect of additional resources for schools," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 290(3), pages 1111-1124.
    8. Nsabimana, René & Perelman, Sergio & Walheer, Barnabé & Mapapa, Mbangala, 2024. "Effectiveness and efficiency in access to reliable electricity: The case of East African countries," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    9. Oleg Badunenko & Deni Mazrekaj & Subal C. Kumbhakar & Kristof Witte, 2021. "Persistent and transient inefficiency in adult education," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 60(6), pages 2925-2942, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:tjorxx:v:70:y:2019:i:9:p:1522-1537. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/tjor .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.