Exploring cross-country differences in the efficiency of schools
| 21 October, 2015 | ||
| 5:00 pm |
Title:
Exploring cross-country differences in the efficiency of schools
Speaker:
JOSE M. CORDERO
Date:
21/10/2015 17:00h
Location:
Sala de Seminarios, Edificio Torretamarit
Abstract:
The participation of the majority of nations on common international large-scale assessments like PISA, TIMSS or PIRLS has provided researchers with extensive cross-national databases that can be used to assess the performance of educational systems from a comparative perspective. Most cross-national studies usually apply econometric techniques to detect significant relationships between output and input variables, thus they do not consider the potential existence of potential inefficiencies in the performance of schools. In this seminar, I will present the results of two different empirical papers in which I have applied some recently developed frontier nonparametric methods to explore the main contextual factors that explain the existing divergences in school performance across countries. In particular, the robust order-m are used to estimate efficiency measures of school performance, then the metafrontierapproach is adapted to this framework to decompose the estimated inefficiency between two different levels (school and country) and, finally, the conditional nonparametric approach are applied to obtain efficiency scores considering the effect of those external factors and explore their potential influence at different levels (school and country).
Brief Bio:
José Manuel Cordero Ferrera is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics of the University of Extremadura. He holds a degree and Ph.D. in Economics from the same university. His scientific research has been mainly focused in the following fields: efficiency measurement in the public sector, economics of education and fiscal federalism. His research experience in the aforementioned fields has been reflected in multiple scientific articles published in referred journals as well as in several books and book chapters. Those research activities have been funded by various research projects in open calls at national and regional level as well as several grants from the Spanish Institute for Fiscal Studies. Likewise, he has attended numerous conferences and congresses in Spain and worldwide such as the European and North American Efficiency and Productivity workshops.
