Jason Coupet

Impact of input substitution and output transformation on data envelopment analysis decisions

ABSTRACT Data envelopment analysis (DEA) can aid managerial decision-making because it offers an opportunity to measure organizational performance in a holistic manner, aggregating data from partial indicators into a single comprehensive measure. However, there are some methodological hazards associated with the use of DEA that are especially relevant to managerial decisions, but which have been largely ignored in the literature. Herein, we identify and show the impact of a ubiquitous methodological hazard in DEA modelling – the economic assumptions regarding input substitutions and output transformations.

Historically Black colleges and universities and resource dependence: a Chow test of production functions

While several studies have examined the impact of expenditures on graduation rates in higher education institutions, historically Black colleges and universities have strong government dependencies that suggest that these links might be different than for other universities. This paper investigates these links by estimating the production function of a subset of a large panel of 4-year institutions and uses a Chow test to find structural differences in production functions of Black universities and other universities. The analysis finds significant structural differences, notably that administrative expenditures have a significantly negative impact on graduation rates at Black universities. The findings suggest that the need to examine administrative frameworks and to diversify resource streams at Black universities is pressing. Using resource dependence theory, this paper concludes with a discussion about how these universities might mitigate the negative effects of government resource dependence.

Strings Attached? Linking Historically Black Colleges and Universities Public Revenue Sources with Efficiency.

ABSTRACT Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), a set of US higher education institutions historically tasked with educating African–American students, receive both state and federal funding. However, state governments often assert operational control through the political process, potentially influencing how key resources are used. Do these different sources of publicness have competing effects on efficiency? Using a 5-year panel of financial and organisational data of HBCUs, this study explores the relative effect of each of these revenue sources on efficiency. The study finds that the efficiency of HBCUs is negatively impacted by higher proportions of state revenue, and that higher proportions of federal revenue have a positive effect on efficiency. This suggests that state governments should consider their political roles in assessing the performance of HBCUs, and that HBCUs might look to lessons from other organisations for methods to reduce the impact of state external control.

Decreasing the cost of metropolitan mass transit by optimizing resource allocation among public and private providers

This paper develops a mathematical programming algorithm that allocates a transit agencys resources among its private and public operators with the objective of decreasing the cost of transit in the urban area while holding total service constant