Efficiency, technology and productivity change in Australian universities, 1998–2003

In this study, productivity growth in 35 Australian universities is investigated using non-parametric frontier techniques over the period 1998–2003. The five inputs included in the analysis are full-time equivalent academic and non-academic staff, non-labour expenditure and undergraduate and postgraduate student load while the six outputs are undergraduate, postgraduate and Ph.D. completions, national competitive and industry grants and publications. Using Malmquist indices, productivity growth is decomposed into technical efficiency and technological change. The results indicate that annual productivity growth averaged 3.3% across all universities, with a range from -1.8% to 13.0%, and was largely attributable to technological progress. However, separate analyses of research-only and teaching-only productivity indicate that most of this gain was attributable to improvements in research-only productivity associated with pure technical and some scale efficiency improvements. While teaching-only productivity also contributed, the largest source of gain in that instance was technological progress offset by a slight fall in technical efficiency.

[1]  Jalal Fadili,et al.  Simulation of Gegenbauer processes using wavelet packets , 2005 .

[2]  R. Green,et al.  AN EXPERIMENT IN THE USE OF DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS FOR EVALUATING THE EFFICIENCY OF UK UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENTS OF ACCOUNTING , 1988 .

[3]  A. Worthington.  An Empirical Survey of Frontier Efficiency Measurement Techniques in Education , 2001 .

[4]  Kaoru Tone,et al.  Data Envelopment Analysis , 1996 .

[5]  Abbas Valadkhani,et al.  An Empirical Analysis of the Black Market Exchange Rate in Iran , 2005 .

[6]  J. Beasley.  Determining Teaching and Research Efficiencies , 1995 .

[7]  Marc Robinson.  THE OUTPUT CONCEPT AND PUBLIC SECTOR SERVICES , 2003 .

[8]  Ana Carcaba,et al.  Efficiency and Program-Contract Bargaining in Spanish Public Hospitals , 2004 .

[9]  K. Field,et al.  Measuring the efficiency of British universities: a multi‐period data envelopment analysis , 2004 .

[10]  Andrew C. Worthington,et al.  Emergency finance in Australian households: An empirical analysis of capacity and sources. Discussion paper No 163 , 2003 .

[11]  Tracey West,et al.  Macroeconomic Risk Factors in Australian Commercial Real Estate, Listed Property Trust and Property Sector Stock Returns: A Comparative Analysis Using Garch-M , 2006 .

[12]  Abbas Valadkhani,et al.  Quantifying the Effect of the Gst on Inflation in Australia's Capital Cities: An Intervention Analysis , 2004 .

[13]  Abbas Valadkhani,et al.  Measuring the impact of natural disasters on capital markets: an empirical application using intervention analysis , 2003 .

[14]  Steven Li,et al.  Evidence on the arbitrage efficiency of SPI index futures and options markets , 2007 .

[15]  Elisabetta Magnani,et al.  On Skill Heterogeneity and Inflation , 2004 .

[16]  Eric A. Hanushek,et al.  Education, Economics of , 2001 .

[17]  Antreas D. Athanassopoulos,et al.  Assessing the Comparative Efficiency of Higher Education Institutions in the UK by the Means of Data Envelopment Analysis , 1997 .

[18]  A. Charnes,et al.  Some Models for Estimating Technical and Scale Inefficiencies in Data Envelopment Analysis , 1984 .

[19]  Marc Robinson.  The Australian Budgeting System: On the Cusp of Change , 2003 .

[20]  A. Worthington,et al.  The relationship between the adoption of Internet banking and electronic connectivity: - An international comparison , 2004 .

[21]  Andrew C. Worthington,et al.  Debt as a source of financial stress in Australian households , 2003 .

[22]  Allan P. Layton,et al.  DURATION DEPENDENCE IN THE US BUSINESS CYCLE , 2003 .

[23]  Andrew C. Worthington,et al.  An Analysis of the Rising Cost of Education in Australia , 2004 .

[24]  Adam Clements,et al.  Discretised Non-Linear Filtering for Dynamic Latent Variable Models: with Application to Stochastic Volatility , 2004 .

[25]  M. Farrell.  The Measurement of Productive Efficiency , 1957 .

[26]  J. Johnes.  Data Envelopment Analysis and Its Application to the Measurement of Efficiency in Higher Education. , 2006 .

[27]  T. Coelli,et al.  THE PERFORMANCE OF AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES: CONCEPTUAL ISSUES AND PRELIMINARY RESULTS , 2005 .

[28]  Jill Johnes,et al.  Measuring the Research Performance of UK Economics Departments: An Application of Data Envelopment Analysis , 1993 .

[29]  Marc Robinson.  Tightening the Results/Funding Link in Performance Budgeting Systems , 2003 .

[30]  A. Worthington.  AN EMPIRICAL SURVEY OF FRONTIER EFFICIENCY MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUES IN HEALTHCARE SERVICES , 1999 .

[31]  Andrew C. Worthington,et al.  Weak-form market efficiency in European emerging and developed stock markets , 2003 .

[32]  Gary Madden,et al.  Measuring Public Sector Efficiency: A Study of Economics Departments at Australian Universities , 1997 .

[33]  A. Worthington,et al.  Business expectations and preferences regarding the introduction of daylight saving in Queensland: Discussion Paper No. 145 , 2004 .

[34]  John E. Beasley,et al.  Comparing university departments , 1990 .

[35]  Robert J. Bianchi,et al.  A test of momentum trading strategies in foreign exchange markets: evidence from the G7 , 2004 .

[36]  Michael E. Drew,et al.  Equity Premium: - Does it exist? Evidence from Germany and United Kingdom , 2004 .

[37]  Andrew C. Worthington,et al.  Emergency Funds in Australian Households: An Empirical Analysis of Capacity and Sources , 2004 .

[38]  Andrew C. Worthington,et al.  Tests of random walks and market efficiency in Latin American stock markets: An empirical note. Discussion Paper No. 157 , 2003 .

[39]  A. Flegg,et al.  Does Expansion Cause Congestion? The Case of the Older British Universities, 1994–2004 , 2007 .

[40]  A. Worthington,et al.  Systematic features of high-frequency volatility in Australian electricity markets: Intraday patterns, information arrival and calendar effects , 2004 .

[41]  Scott McCarthy,et al.  An Operating Economic Exposure - Australian Case Study: Foster’s Group Limited Beer , 2004 .

[42]  Andrew C. Worthington,et al.  Modeling the intraday return volatility process in the Australian equity market: An examination of the role of information arrival in S&P/ASX 50 stocks , 2009 .

[43]  Andrew C. Worthington,et al.  The Distribution of Financial Literacy in Australia , 2004 .

[44]  Jill Johnes,et al.  Research Funding and Performance in U.K. University Departments of Economics: A Frontier Analysis. , 1995 .

[45]  Michael E. Drew,et al.  Pricing of Equities in China: Evidence from the Shanghai Stock Exchange , 2005 .

[46]  B. Mahlberg,et al.  Effects of the single market on the Austrian insurance industry , 2003 .

[47]  Michael E. Drew,et al.  Small Firm Effect, Liquidity and Security Returns , 2006 .

[48]  M. Abbott,et al.  The efficiency of Australian universities: a data envelopment analysis , 2003 .

[49]  Mohammad Alauddin,et al.  Demand for M2 in Developing Countries: An Empirical Panel Investigation: Discussion Paper No. 149 , 2003 .

[50]  R. Färe,et al.  Productivity changes in Swedish pharamacies 1980–1989: A non-parametric Malmquist approach , 1992 .

[51]  Shulian Zhang,et al.  Consumption Behaviour Under Institutional Transitions in China , 2005 .

[52]  Emmanuel Thanassoulis,et al.  Assessing productivity changes in UK hospitals reflecting technology and input prices , 2000 .

[53]  Helen Higgs,et al.  Financial Returns and Price Determinants in the Australian Art Market, 1973-2003 , 2005 .

[54]  Abraham Charnes,et al.  Measuring the efficiency of decision making units , 1978 .

[55]  Robert Crouchley,et al.  Stochastic frontier estimation of a CES cost function: the case of higher education in Britain , 2002 .

[56]  Jan-Egbert Sturm,et al.  Foreign bank entry, deregulation and bank efficiency: Lessons from the Australian experience , 2004 .

[57]  Adam Clements,et al.  Non-linear filtering with state dependant transition probabilities: A threshold (size effect) SV model , 2005 .

[58]  Stanley G. Eakins,et al.  Do Momentum Strategies Work? , 2004 .

[59]  Michael E. Drew,et al.  Does Idiosyncratic Volatility Matter? New Zealand Evidence , 2007 .

[60]  Ali Emrouznejad,et al.  An exploratory analysis of the cost structure of Higher Education in England , 2005 .

[61]  Radhika Lahiri,et al.  Tax Distortions in a Neoclassical Monetary Economy in the Presence of Administration Costs : Discussion Paper No 151 , 2003 .

[62]  Boon L. Lee.  Interstate Comparison of Output and Productivity in the Australian Agricultural Sector, 1991 to 1999, Discussion Paper No 161 , 2003 .

[63]  Andrew C. Worthington,et al.  Losing sleep at the market: An empirical note on the daylight saving anomaly in Australia: Discussion Paper No. 146 , 2003 .

[64]  Colin Clark,et al.  Australia's Service Sector: A Study in Diversity , 2002 .

[65]  Jon D. Stanford,et al.  Portability of Superannuation Balances , 2004 .

[66]  Trevor Cobbold,et al.  Australia's Industry Sector Productivity Performance , 2003 .

[67]  A. Charnes,et al.  Data Envelopment Analysis Theory, Methodology and Applications , 1995 .

[68]  Timothy Coelli,et al.  An Introduction to Efficiency and Productivity Analysis , 1997 .

[69]  Geraint Johnes,et al.  Scale and technical efficiency in the production of economic research , 1995 .

[70]  Noel Hyndman,et al.  The achievement of scale efficiency in UK universities: A multiple-input multiple-output analysis , 1995 .

[71]  Petra Behrens,et al.  Economic Development Strategies: Examples from Europe and Australia , 2005 .

[72]  P. W. Wilson,et al.  Sensitivity Analysis of Efficiency Scores: How to Bootstrap in Nonparametric Frontier Models , 1998 .

[73]  Hristos Doucouliagos,et al.  Research output of Australian universities , 2004 .

[74]  A. G. Barnett,et al.  A time-domain test for some types of nonlinearity , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.

[75]  Thomas F. Cooley,et al.  Tax Distortions in a Neoclassical Monetary Economy , 1992 .

[76]  Renato De Leone,et al.  Data Envelopment Analysis , 2009, Encyclopedia of Optimization.

[77]  Radhika Lahiri.  Cooperation v/s Non-cooperation in R&D Competition with Spillovers , 2003 .

[78]  Rodney C. Wolff,et al.  Statistical Tests for Lyapunov Exponents of Deterministic Systems , 2003 .

[79]  Andrew C. Worthington,et al.  Socioeconomic And Demographic Determinants Of Household Gambling In Australia , 2003 .

[80]  A. Worthington.  Malmquist Indices of Productivity Change in Australian Financial Services , 1999 .

[81]  R. Färe,et al.  Productivity Growth, Technical Progress, and Efficiency Change in Industrialized Countries , 1994 .

[82]  Boon L. Lee.  Significance of Employing a Multilateral Index Formula for Interstate Comparisons: A Case Study of the Australian Farm Sector , 2005 .

[83]  Clevo Wilson,et al.  What Role Does Knowledge of Wildlife Play In Providing Support For Species' Conservation? , 2005 .