Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Economics Research Institute Study Paper

Volume

10

Publisher

Utah State University Department of Economics

Publication Date

1999

Rights

Copyright for this work is held by the author. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user. For more information contact the Institutional Repository Librarian at digitalcommons@usu.edu.

First Page

1

Last Page

33

Abstract

This paper uses both the stochastic and nonstochastic production function approach to measure technical efficiency in public education in Utah. The stochastic specification estimates technical efficiency assuming half normal and exponential distributions. The nonstochastic specification uses two-stage DEA to separate the effects of fixed inputs on the measure of technical efficiency. The empirical analysis shows substantial variation in efficiency among school districts. While these measures are insensitive to the specific distributional assumptions about the one-sided component of the error term in the stochastic specification, they are sensitive to the treatment of fixed socioeconomic inputs in the two-stage DEA.

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