This paper analyzes the evolution of the technical efficiency of Spanish regional tax offices with respect to the main devolved taxes for the period 2005–2014. We apply the conditional directional ...distance function methodology, which allows us to incorporate undesirable outputs into the production function, represented by administrative complaints lodged by taxpayers as an (inverse) measure of the quality of service provision, and account for the influence of the socioeconomic context in which these offices operate. This methodology has been adapted for application in a dynamic context in order to analyze how the performance of these units has evolved over a period that includes different stages of the economic cycle. The main results show that efficiency levels have fallen over the period, especially since the start of the economic recession. Likewise, we identify that the influence of incomes and fiscal capacity are especially significant explanatory factors of this evolution.
•A new Malmquist-type index to analyze two or more groups of DMU when only a pseudo-panel database is available.•Extends Camanho and Dyson's one-period Malmquist-type index approach.•This new index ...is useful for comparing schools using databases like PISA or TIMSS.•We provide a comparison between public and private school performance in the Basque Country.•Results show that private schools outperform the public ones.
In this paper, we propose a different way of using the Malmquist index that allows us to further analyze the relative performance divergences between two groups of decision-making units (DMUs) over time when only a pseudo-panel database is available. To do this, we extend the Camanho and Dyson (2006) one-period Malmquist-type index (CDMI) for a pseudo-panel database with a new pseudo-panel Malmquist index (PPMI). To illustrate the methodology, we apply it to examine how the performance gap between public and private government-dependent secondary schools in the Basque Country (Spain) performed across three PISA waves (2006, 2009 and 2012). The results suggest that performance is persistently and significantly higher for private government-dependent schools than for public schools.
During the global economic crisis, unemployment rates increased dramatically across Europe, especially among the least educated population groups. The picture in Spain in 2012, with unemployment ...rates running at over 20% and youth employment close to 45%, was discouraging. In face of this situation, the Spanish autonomous government of Extremadura launched a programme specifically aimed at motivating unemployed individuals without a school degree to return to education and earn the compulsory secondary education diploma. This paper applies a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to evaluate the impact of this conditional cash transfer programme using administrative data. The results show that the programme did not increase the likelihood of earning the lower secondary education diploma. This finding is a
caveat emptor
for governments considering similar policies, and remarks again the importance of testing innovations before generalization.
The programme for international student assessment (PISA) 2006 Report (OECD, PISA 2006: science competencies for tomorrow's world, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris in ...2007) showed significant differences among Spanish students attending publicly financed schools. Publicly financed schools include entirely public schools and schools that are privately managed but publicly funded. Families with a lower socioeconomic status may self-select into public schools, so a direct efficiency comparison between the two school types could lead to flawed conclusions because of the possible school selection bias. In this paper, we suggest using a propensity score matching approach in order to correctly analyze the impact of school ownership on student performance. After tackling the selfselection problem, we use a stochastic parametric distance function framework to compare student efficiency and productivity in both school types across ten Spanish regions using PISA 2006 data. Furthermore, we propose two original measures to analyze the impact of school ownership on academic performance across regions: the average treatment effect on the treated on the production frontier and the average treatment effect on the treated assuming school inefficiency. We find that, on average, private government-dependent schools are more productive than public schools, although efficiency results across regions are highly divergent.
Since the late 1990s, Spain has played host to a sizeable flow of immigrants who have been absorbed into the compulsory stage of the education system. In this article, our aim is to assess the impact ...of that exogenous increase in the number of immigrant students from 2003 to 2009 on grade retention using Spanish data from PISA 2003 and 2009. For this purpose, we use the difference-in-differences method as a dose treatment capable of detecting whether the immigrant concentration has had a significant effect on student performance. Our results evidenced that their arrival does not on average decrease school promotion rates with respect to 2003 and is even beneficial to native students. However, although the concentration of immigrant students at the same school does have a negative impact on immigrant students generating more grade retention, native students are unaffected until concentrations of immigrant students is above 15%.
In France and Spain, children born in the same calendar year start school together, regardless of maturity differences due to their birth month. This paper analyses the educational impact of birth ...month on the probability of grade retention controlling by other covariates. Using the PISA 2009 database for both countries, we do identify a great impact on grade retention since students born in the last months of the year are between 70% and 80% more likely to repeat a grade than children born in the first months of the same year. We conclude that policy interventions are required in those countries to ensure that individuals are not unfairly penalized by their birth month.
Measuring efficiency in education Cordero-Ferrera, Jose Manuel; Pedraja-Chaparro, Francisco; Salinas-Jiménez, Javier
Applied economics,
05/2008, Volume:
40, Issue:
10
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Measuring efficiency in the education sector is a highly complex task. One of the reasons is that the main resource of schools (the type of students they have) lie outside of their control, which ...means that it must be treated differently to other factors in analysis. This study examines the different options available in the literature for incorporating non-controllable inputs in a data envelopment analysis in order to determine the most appropriate model for evaluating schools. Our empirical study presents the results obtained using the model proposed by Fried
et al
. (1999), though we use bootstrap techniques to avoid problems of bias in the estimations.
This article analyses how Spanish decentralisation process has been developed from 1978 Constitution to now. Special reference is made to the role of local governments. Some dysfunctions are ...emphasised in terms of competence duplicities, unbalances and asymmetries in the financing models, without forgetting the advances reached in matters of expenditure decentralisation, tax autonomy and territorial solidarity. Hence, some criticisms are made about the answers delivered by the recent Ley de Racionalización y Sostenibilidad de la Administración Local to the former problems. The article concludes discussing about centripetal and centrifuge forces in the actual scenario of economic crisis and showing the elements that we consider more necessary to reach a more stable and balanced solution among the main agents of decentralisation, regional and local governments.
This paper examines the role that weight restrictions play in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). It is argued that the decision to include a factor (input or output) in a DEA model represents an ...implicit judgement that the factor has a non-trivial weight. It therefore seems perverse to allow DEA to assign a trivial weight to that factor in assessing the efficiency of a unit. There is therefore a strong case for imposing restrictions on factor weights. However, many existing methods of weight restriction are in practice unwieldy. This paper proposes an alternative approach we term contingent weight restriction which is both practical and intellectually consistent with the DEA philosophy. The paper explores the implications of alternative methods of weight restriction using simulated data from a well known production process.
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