The efficiency of public resources in the educational system at the state level
Keywords:
Education, efficiency, public spending, human resources, infrastructureAbstract
This research aims to determine whether the utilization of public resources allocated to the education sector at the subnational level in Mexico from 2008 to 2022 was efficient. Hierarchical cluster analysis was used to search for similarities between states regarding the use of public resources and the achieved production. We found an inverse relationship between public spending (as a percentage of state GDP) and the average level of schooling of the population aged 15 years and older; evidence is shown that it is possible to obtain higher average schooling with fewer human resources and infrastructure. The comparison of the slacks- based measure of efficiency (Tone, 2001) at the beginning and the end of the period showed that only three states remained on the efficient frontier; the rest of them registered decreases in efficiency, or marginal increases that did not move them away from the inefficiency region. The analysis of the slacks associated with each input in the education sector makes it possible to find areas of opportunity. The decomposition of the Hicks- Moorsteen index into a measure of efficiency variation and another of technological change (O’Donnell, 2010) exhibited a generalized loss of efficiency and a technological stagnation throughout the period of analysis. Baja California Sur is the entity with the best performance in every efficiency measure considered within this research.
JEL Classification: D61, H52, H75
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