Efficiency assessment and convergence in teaching and research in Italian public universities

This paper investigates the pattern of teaching and research performances, the relationship between them, and the convergence for Italian public HEIs in the period 2000–2010, by comparing different bootstrap robust non-parametric frontier estimators. Overall we find an efficiency improvement, mainly driven by research, whereas teaching efficiency increases only in the very first years of the sample period. We also ascertain a slightly positive relationship between research and teaching performances. Furthermore, we find that Italian HEIs converge, in the observed period, although research and teaching do it at a different pace. Our empirical findings are robust to alternative estimators and bootstrapped bias correction.