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The Research Efficiency of US Universities: a Nonparametric Frontier Modelling Approach

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  • Christopher Bruffaerts
  • Bram De Rock
  • Catherine Dehon

Abstract

Understanding the factors that may impact how well universities are transforminga set of inputs into research outputs is of great interest for university andpublic authorities. The goal of this paper is on the one hand to measure the researchefficiencies of US universities and on the other hand to study the impact ofenvironmental variables on them. To reach this objective, the latest techniques innonparametric frontier models are used with both classic and robust methodologies.Focus is in particular devoted to the impact of the institution type (publicor private), the teaching load, the degree of collaboration with industrial partnersand the degree of international collaborations on the production process associatedto research activities. The impact of the size of a university on the way ressourcesare used regarding research activities is also studied.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher Bruffaerts & Bram De Rock & Catherine Dehon, 2013. "The Research Efficiency of US Universities: a Nonparametric Frontier Modelling Approach," Working Papers ECARES ECARES 2013-31, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    • Handle: RePEc:eca:wpaper:2013/147877
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    Cited by:

    1. Matthias Gnewuch & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2018. "Super-efficiency of education institutions: an application to economics departments," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(6), pages 610-623, November.
    2. Christopher Bruffaerts & Bram De Rock & Catherine Dehon, 2014. "Outlier Detection in Nonparametric Frontier Models," Working Papers ECARES ECARES 2014-12, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    3. Klaus Wohlrabe & Félix de Moya Anegon & Lutz Bornmann, 2019. "How Efficiently Do Elite US Universities Produce Highly Cited Papers?," Publications, MDPI, vol. 7(1), pages 1-15, January.
    4. Klaus Wohlrabe & Felix de Moya Anegon & Lutz Bornmann, 2018. "How efficiently produce elite US universities highly cited papers? A case study based on input and output data," ifo Working Paper Series 264, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.

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    Keywords

    conditional efficiency measures; Kernel Smoothing; nonparametric frontiers; research efficiency; two-stage regression; university ranking;
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