Universities' Efficiency and Regional Economic Short-run Growth: Empirical Evidence from Russia

NRU Higher School of Economics , 2018.

Agasisti T., Egorov A., Zinchenko D., Leshukov O.

This paper analyses the link between the efficiency of regional higher education systems and the rates of regional economic development between 2012 and 2015 in Russia. The efficiency scores are calculated at the institutional level using a double-bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA) procedure, taking into account the different internal characteristics of universities which may affect their production process, and the scores are then aggregated at the regional level. We formulate a regional economic growth model that considers the efficiency of regional higher education systems as one of the explanatory variables. As an econometric method, we employ a robust GMM estimator. The model also includes spatial interactions between regional economies and between regional higher education systems in neighboring regions. The findings highlight a positive, substantial and statistically significant effect of HEI efficiency on the regional economic growth rate. We also found negative spillover effects indicating that efficient regional higher education systems may extract resources from neighboring regions.

Keywords: экономический рост, economic growth, пространственные эффекты, regional economic development, региональное экономическое развитие, эффективность в высшем образовании, efficiency in higher education, knowledge spillovers

Publication based on the results of: Transformation of universities and contribution to societal and economic development (2018)