Measuring the efficiency of teaching activities in Italian universities: An information theoretic approach

The measurement of teaching efficiency of Italian universities has become a topic of much interest and debate in recent years. The aim of this study is to fully explore the potential of panel data in the analysis of teaching efficiency both by modelling human capital formation in the university as a series of sub-processes and by using various models to account for observed and unobserved factors which generate heterogeneity. The new approach for estimating a stochastic frontier model based on the Generalized Maximum Entropy method provides further insights into the measurement of university teaching performance. The evolution of efficiency throughout the entire study period was also analyzed.