Measuring public primary education productivity across Mexican states using a Hicks-Moorsteen index

ABSTRACT

Despite the importance of analysing how an educational system works across regions, there is a lack of research benchmarking regions’ performance over time. The aim of this research is to measure total factor productivity changes (TFPC) in the primary education sector across 30 Mexican states over eight academic years from 2006–07 to 2013–14. To do this, we calculate the Hicks-Moorsteen total factor productivity index (HMTFP) using information on third-grade primary education students attending publicly funded schools. We also explore the main environmental factors behind these differences in productivity. Estimates for the analysed period show an average positive TFPC of 1.91%, driven by technological progress. We also find a significant positive effect on productivity when the policy party governing at the federal and the state levels coincide. The paper concludes by pointing out the need to use school-level data to monitor and evaluate the education systems as an indispensable element for delivering efficient and effective public administration services to citizens.

KEYWORDS:

• Total factor productivity
• Hicks-Moorsteen
• primary education
• Mexico

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• C14
• D24
• I22

Acknowledgments

We thank the anonymous reviewer for providing constructive comments and help in improving the contents and presentation of this paper.

We are grateful to participants at the VIII International Congress on Efficiency and Productivity held in Cordoba (Spain), May 10^th-11^th 2018, for comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and analyzed during this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Notes

¹ The index was discussed by Bjurek (1996) in the literature, but is attributed by Diewert (1992) to Hicks (1961) and Moorsteen (1961).

² For more on this, see Briec and Kerstens (2011) and Briec, Kerstens, and Prior (2013).

³ For an in-depth review of efficiency and productivity applications in education using both, non-parametric and parametric methods, see De Witte and López-Torres (2017).

⁴ ENLACE scores are considered to be reliable due to its application procedure (it is an annual, census–based test), which is coordinated by the Directorate General for Policy Evaluation (DGE) of the Ministry of Public Education (SEP). Likewise, a third topic, which changes every year, was evaluated since 2008. However, these scores have not been considered for this analysis.

⁵ Refers to nationwide educational expenditure by state governments based on the amounts of resources allocated to the education sector and their application, not including any resources from Ramo 11 (SEP 2016). It accounts for budget figures for each fiscal year.

⁶ The base year is 2006, with information from INEGI (2011) from the second half of June for every year.

⁷ This information system is available at http://snie.sep.gob.mx/Estadistica.html

⁸ The global recession caused aggregate demand to weaken. It also affected exports, while wages and credit plummeted, causing consumption to decrease. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC 2009, 21) points out that the main transmission channel of the crisis was, in the first place, the fall in world trade, followed by the contraction of foreign investment, tourism and migrant remittances.

Additional information

Funding

Daniel Santín thanks the financial support of the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (ECO2017-83759-P).