Efficiency of Ecuadorian state universities. A parametric and non-parametric analysis in three phases

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to identify the efficient public universities in Ecuador between 2015 and 2020, using non-parametric (Data Envelopment Analysis, DEA) and parametric (Panel Data) techniques, considering variables such as budget, number of students, number of professors, number of scientific articles published, whether or not the university is a polytechnic, whether or not it offers a medical degree, among others. As a result, 17 of the 25 universities initially considered behaved as efficient for the eight inputs and two outputs used. From the results of the panel data applied to these institutions, it was found that out of ten variables used, four were significant and the evaluation of the final efficiency, considering the budget as output and the four inputs from the panel, showed that only 28% of the total number of universities analyzed were efficient.