Heterogeneity of Inter-regional Efficiency of Education Public Spending in Fragile State: Evidence from Chad

This study analyses the inter-regional efficiency of education public spending in Chad, which is characterized by a long history of armed conflict. Specifically, we investigate the institutional, political, and security dimensions of fragility influencing the interregional education public spending efficiency for the period 2007-2016. The data used are from the Ministry of National Education and the National Institute of Statistics, Economics and Demographic Studies (INSEED) and cover 23 regions of Chad. The education public sector efficiency scores is estimated in the first stage using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach, while in the second stage, the panel data Tobit regression is used to evaluate the determinants of the efficiency of the education public spending. The mean efficiency score is 0.96 in primary education and 0.90 in secondary education. This means that the better management of the education sector may allow reducing the amount of public education spending by 4% in primary education sector and 10% in the secondary education sector, given the actual level of the quality and the quantity of education. With regard to these results, the primary sector is more efficient than the secondary sector. The Tobit estimates suggests that efficiency is negatively associated to head of region reshuffle, armed conflicts sequence, and the number of parliament member, which capture, respectively, the institutional, security, and political dimensions of fragility. Based on our findings, it is recommended to the government to reduce the central government instability in general, and specifically the recurrent turnover of the head of region, these being the main determinants of public spending inefficiency in Chad.