The efficiency of public education spending in Latin America: A comparison to high-income countries

This study analyzes the efficiency of public education spending and the role of possible conditioning factors in upper-middle income Latin American countries compared to high-income economies over 1970-2010. It applies a two-stage approach first obtaining country-efficiency scores through a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and then identifying their possible determinants by means of panel bootstrapped truncated regressions. Results show a minor role of inefficiency since 1990 and different efficiency profiles depending on the country's education outlays. Besides, globalization and democracy show up as important conditions affecting the efficiency path of the Latin American sub-sample.