IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/soecon/v70y2003i1p172-183.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

New Estimates of Economies of Scale and Scope in Higher Education

Author

Listed:
  • David N. Laband
  • Bernard F. Lentz

Abstract

Following Colin, Rhine, and Santos (1989), we reeslimate cost functions for 1492 private and 1450 public institutions of higher education (IHEs) in the United States, using data for fiscal year 1995‐1996. Costs are modeled as a function of the level of production of three outputs: undergraduate education, graduate education, and externally funded research. We find that public and private IHEs are characterized by significantly different cost functions. At the sample means of the variables, we estimate that public and private IHEs enjoy both ray economics of scale and product‐specific economies with respect to production of all three outputs. However, we also find that, at the sample means, both public and private institutions are characterized by diseconomies of scope in the production of these three outputs. Our findings suggest that both public and private IHEs could reduce their unit costs of operation by growing relative to the current mean levels of production.

Suggested Citation

  • David N. Laband & Bernard F. Lentz, 2003. "New Estimates of Economies of Scale and Scope in Higher Education," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 70(1), pages 172-183, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:70:y:2003:i:1:p:172-183
    DOI: 10.1002/j.2325-8012.2003.tb00562.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2325-8012.2003.tb00562.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/j.2325-8012.2003.tb00562.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Baumol, William J, 1982. "Contestable Markets: An Uprising in the Theory of Industry Structure," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(1), pages 1-15, March.
    2. Cohn, Elchanan & Rhine, Sherrie L W & Santos, Maria C, 1989. "Institutions of Higher Education as Multi-product Firms: Economies of Scale and Scope," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 71(2), pages 284-290, May.
    3. Gordon C. Winston, 1999. "Subsidies, Hierarchy and Peers: The Awkward Economics of Higher Education," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(1), pages 13-36, Winter.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jože P. Damijan & Sandra Damijan & Osiris Jorge Parcero, 2023. "Is There a Size Premium for Nations?," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 14(4), pages 3974-4016, December.
    2. Isaac Addai, 2019. "Assessing University of Education, Winneba Production Economies of Scale and Scope: A Further Decomposition," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 3(11), pages 323-327, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Robert E. Martin, 2011. "The College Cost Disease," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14179.
    2. Tommaso Agasisti & Giuseppe Munda, 2017. "Efficiency of investment in compulsory education: An Overview of Methodological Approaches," JRC Research Reports JRC106681, Joint Research Centre.
    3. Philippe Cyrenne & Hugh Grant, 2012. "Modeling the Optimization Problem of a Public University," Departmental Working Papers 2012-02, The University of Winnipeg, Department of Economics.
    4. Shukhrat Kholmuminov & Robert E Wright, 2017. "Cost efficiency analysis of public higher education institutions in Uzbekistan," Working Papers 1704, University of Strathclyde Business School, Department of Economics.
    5. Daraio, Cinzia & Bonaccorsi, Andrea & Simar, Léopold, 2015. "Efficiency and economies of scale and specialization in European universities: A directional distance approach," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 430-448.
    6. Marvin A. Titus & Adriana Vamosiu & Shannon Hayes Buenaflor & Casey Maliszewski Lukszo, 2021. "Persistent Cost Efficiency at Public Community Colleges in the US: A Stochastic Frontier Analysis," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 62(8), pages 1168-1197, December.
    7. Chavas, Jean-Paul & Barham, Bradford, 2007. "On the Microeconomics of Diversification under Uncertainty and Learning," Staff Paper Series 515, University of Wisconsin, Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    8. Liang-Cheng Zhang & Andrew C. Worthington, 2018. "Explaining Estimated Economies of Scale and Scope in Higher Education: A Meta-Regression Analysis," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 59(2), pages 156-173, March.
    9. Tommaso Agasisti & Ralph Hippe & Giuseppe Munda, 2017. "Efficiency of investment in compulsory education: empirical analyses in Europe," JRC Research Reports JRC106678, Joint Research Centre.
    10. G. Johnes, 1997. "Costs in UK Higher Education: A System-Wide Perspective," CERT Discussion Papers 9707, Centre for Economic Reform and Transformation, Heriot Watt University.
    11. Geraint Johnes, 2007. "Funding Formulae where Costs Legitimately Differ: The Case of Higher Education in England," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(4), pages 385-404.
    12. Elizabeth Becker & Cotton M. Lindsay & Gary Grizzle, 2003. "The derived demand for faculty research," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(8), pages 549-567.
    13. Kim, Kwansoo & Barham, Bradford L. & Chavas, Jean-Paul & Foltz, Jeremy, 2005. "Research and Development at U.S. Research Universities: An Analysis of Scope Economies," Staff Paper Series 487, University of Wisconsin, Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    14. Jean-Paul Chavas & Kwansoo Kim, 2007. "Measurement and Sources of Economies of Scope: A Primal Approach," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 163(3), pages 411-427, September.
    15. Geraint Johnes, 1996. "Multi-product cost functions and the funding of tuition in UK universities," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(9), pages 557-561.
    16. Keiji Hashimoto & Elchanan Cohn, 1997. "Economies of Scale and Scope in Japanese Private Universities," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(2), pages 107-115.
    17. Néstor Duch-Brown & Martí Parellada-Sabata & Jose Polo-Otero, 2010. "Economies of scale and scope of university research and technology transfer: a flexible multi-product approach," Working Papers 2010/51, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    18. Cyrenne, Philippe & Grant, Hugh, 2009. "University decision making and prestige: An empirical study," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 237-248, April.
    19. G. Thomas Sav, 2004. "Higher education costs and scale and scope economies," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(6), pages 607-614.
    20. Abe, Yasumi & Watanabe, Satoshi P., 2012. "A NEW APPROACH TO ANALYZING UNIVERSITY PRESTIGE AND INTERNAL RESOURCE ALLOCATION: Geometric Interpretations and Implications," University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education qt2tz763xp, Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:70:y:2003:i:1:p:172-183. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)2325-8012 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.