Efficiency and University size: discipline-wise evidence from the European Universities

To get any reasonable results concerning efficiency and unit size requires relatively large and homogeneous data sets. In European countries the number of universities in a single country usually does not allow such an analysis. Also in the countries with hundreds of universities like UK, Germany and France the homogeneity requirement is usually not met. Generally, the homogeneity requirement is best met if research fields, instead of universities as such are compared. In this article we make the first time a use of research field data in a set of European countries from Aquameth data bank. The data is created in a Prime network of excellence (link) project by researchers from 10 European countries. The paper unfolds as follows. In section 2 we give a detailed reasoning for methodological choices done, by discussing the university production as a specific type of multi output decision problem. Section 3 introduces the Aquameth databank and the sample to be used in the analysis. Our efficiency model covers five research fields in the universities of six European countries, namely Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and Finland. Section 4 present the results and discusses the further possibilities of micro level international university data banks.