Using non-radial DEA to assess school efficiency in a cross-country perspective: An empirical analysis of OECD countries

Abstract

In this paper we use data from OECD countries participating in PISA 2012 to assess the efficiency of schools in a cross-country framework. In the analysis, and in contrast to previous applications, we con- sider that schools might concentrate their effort s on improving the results in one dimension of the edu- cational output to a greater extent than in the other. To do this, we rely on non-radial efficiency measures of performance and the estimation of an educational production function based upon Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) techniques. Specifically, DEA non-radial measures allow for identifying different levels of inefficiency for each output considered (reading and maths). In particular, we apply a non-radial measure based on Ando et al. [5] and Aparicio et al. [12]. Our results show that the majority of schools in OECD countries tend to be less efficient in reading than in mathematics