Efficiency and Economies of Scale in Academic Knowledge Production

Abstract: This paper investigates the properties of knowledge production in academic research using a panel of 17 OECD countries reaching from 1989 to 1996. The production process is modelled using capital and labour as inputs and the number of published international journal articles and/or the num...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Bibliographische Detailangaben
Link(s) zu Dokument(en):IHS Publikation
Hauptverfasser: Felderer, Bernhard, Obersteiner, Michael
Format: IHS Series NonPeerReviewed
Sprache:Englisch
Veröffentlicht: Institut für Höhere Studien 1999
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:Abstract: This paper investigates the properties of knowledge production in academic research using a panel of 17 OECD countries reaching from 1989 to 1996. The production process is modelled using capital and labour as inputs and the number of published international journal articles and/or the number of graduates as outputs. First, we test for the existence of economies of scale in academic research. Our results give indication for decreasing returns to scale in the production of new academicknowledge. This empirical result might contribute to the recent controversy on the properties of the innovation technology used in endogenous growth models. Second, we determine efficiency scores for each individual country. For the estimation of efficiencies we apply parametric and non-parametric methods. Although results differ slightly with the method used, a stable efficiency ranking is found.;