This paper describes an attempt to evaluate cost efficiency in UK university central administration. The funding councils of higher education institutions have progressively evolved elaborate systems for measuring university performance in teaching quality and research. Indeed, funding of...

Bodies such as those funding education or health services normally make use of marginal resource levels (e.g. the level of funding per pupil) to allocate resources to operating units. It is typically desired that marginal resource levels should encourage the operating units to use resources as...

This paper compares data envelopment analysis (DEA) and ratio analysis as alternative tools for assessing the performance of organisational units such as bank branches and schools. Such units typically use one or more resources to secure one or more outputs, the inputs and/or outputs being...

This paper proposes an approach to compute cost efficiency in contexts where units can adjust input quantities and to some degree prices so that through their joint determination they can minimise the aggregate cost of the outputs they secure. The model developed is based on the data envelopment...