Educational systems can be characterized by a complex structure: students, classes and teachers, schools and principals, and providers of education. The added value of schools is likely influenced by all these levels and, especially, by interactions between them. We illustrate the ability of...

Despite measures on the European level to increase the compatibility between the HE sectors of the member states, the recent literature exposes variations in their efficiencies. To gain insights into these differences we split the efficiency term according to the two management levels each...

This paper deals with the reforming processes in higher education (HE) from centralised systems towards more competitive ones. In particular, I discuss these issues referring to the Italian case, and the market-like mechanisms introduced in it during 1990s and early 2000s. The focus of the paper...

Merit requirements in need-based student aid may exacerbate inequality in higher education but at the same time improve efficiency of aid expenditure by increasing on-time graduation, for instance. Disentangling the effect of the two building blocks of student aid ("need" and "merit") is...

A random parameters stochastic frontier model is applied to Italian data in order to evaluate the cost function and efficiency of higher education institutions. The method yields useful information about inter-institutional variation in cost structure and technical efficiency. Returns to scale...

We employ Data Envelopment Analysis to compute the technical efficiency of Italian and English higher education institutions. Our results show that, in relation to the country-specific frontier, institutions in both countries are typically very efficient. However, institutions in England are...