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Efficiency and productivity growth in Chinese universities during the post-reform period

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  • NG, Ying Chu
  • LI, Sung-ko

Abstract

The social science research performance of Chinese universities is examined using panel data. The universities are found to be very inefficient in general, with not much difference between regions. By far the largest single cause of universities' overall technical efficiency is pure technical efficiency, along with a considerable amount of scale inefficiency and a modest amount of congestion. No obvious regional differences in the universities' productivity growth are apparent between 1998 and 2002. Decomposition of the Malmquist productivity index indicates that although there has been technological progress over the years, poor scale efficiency and technical efficiency have resulted in deterioration in the universities' average productivity. There are signs of increasing congestion during the period studied.

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  • NG, Ying Chu & LI, Sung-ko, 2009. "Efficiency and productivity growth in Chinese universities during the post-reform period," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 183-192, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:chieco:v:20:y:2009:i:2:p:183-192
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    6. Sun, Yu & Yang, Feng & Wang, Dawei & Ang, Sheng, 2023. "Efficiency evaluation for higher education institutions in China considering unbalanced regional development: A meta-frontier Super-SBM model," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    7. Tommaso Agasisti & Ekaterina Shibanova & Daria Platonova & Mikhail Lisyutkin, 2018. "The Russian Excellence Initiative For Higher Education: An Econometric Evaluation Of Short-Term Results," HSE Working papers WP BRP 201/EC/2018, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    8. Néstor Duch-Brown & Montserrat Vilalta, 2010. "Can better governance increase university efficiency?," Working Papers 2010/52, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    9. Fu, Tsu-Tan & See, Kok Fong, 2022. "An integrated analysis of quality and productivity growth in China’s and Taiwan’s higher education institutions," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 234-249.
    10. Tommaso Agasisti & Guo-liang Yang & Yao-yao Song & Carolyn-Thi Thanh Dung Tran, 2021. "Evaluating the higher education productivity of Chinese and European “elite” universities using a meta-frontier approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 5819-5853, July.
    11. Ma, Zhanxin & See, Kok Fong & Yu, Ming-Miin & Zhao, Chunying, 2021. "Research efficiency analysis of China's university faculty members: A modified meta-frontier DEA approach," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    12. Shamohammadi, Mehdi & Oh, Dong-hyun, 2019. "Measuring the efficiency changes of private universities of Korea: A two-stage network data envelopment analysis," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).

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