This paper shows the effect of school staff autonomy on educational performance. The distinctive feature with existing literature is that we employ variation in autonomy within the same country and within the same school type to reduce the omitted variables problems. To fully capture the...

In this paper a semiparametric stochastic metafrontier approach is used to obtain insight into firmlevel competitiveness in Europe. We differ from standard TFP studies at the firm level as we simultaneously allow for inefficiency, noise and do not impose a functional form on the input-output...

Using firm-level data for Belgium, we study the validity of Hicks neutrality in several sectors that cover the spectrum of knowledge intensity. We find that Hicks neutrality is clearly not supported by the data in different sectors. The results are not sensitive to altering the specification of...

We show the relevance of government expenditure inefficiency using the Barro (1990) model. We estimate government inefficiency for 52 developing countries using a data envelopment analysis. The estimated inefficiencies are subsequently used in a general to specific approach in order to identify...