Efficiency in Education Workshop, Milan 2016, Call for Papers
4th Workshop on Efficiency in Education
Milan (Italy)
October 20th and 21st, 2016
Organized by: Politecnico di Milano – Department of Management, Economics and
Industrial Engineering
Local Organizer: prof. Tommaso Agasisti
Joint Organizer: prof. Kristof De Witte, KU Leuven and Maastricht University
Call for papers
Improving the efficiency of public organizations is a major challenge in the context of public
finance and economic development, where fiscal consolidation has become an essential
characteristic of any reform. Budgetary reforms are today inspired by the ability to reward
performance; and among them, the ability to transform inputs (human and financial
resources) into outputs (public services of a given quality).
While such emphasis is different between specific subsectors (i.e. health care, education,
elderly services, unemployment services, country-level and local governments, public
service utilities, etc.), shared characteristics make the discipline of studying public sector
efficiency a common one: the necessity of defining the concepts of ‘technical’ and
‘allocative’ efficiency, the development of theoretical frameworks about the determinants
of efficiency, the use of qualitative and quantitative techniques for estimating efficiency
levels. The purpose of the Workshop is to focus on specific challenges for the educational
sector, bringing together scholars from various disciplines and fields, for debating together
about the present and future challenges in the area of educational efficiency and
performance measurement, and policy and managerial implications of the results obtained
by ongoing research.
***
The Workshop is the fourth of a series of academic meetings focused on efficiency analysis
in education, the previous ones being hosted in Greece (Thessaloniki), United Kingdom
(London) and Belgium (Leuven) in 2013, 2014 and 2015 respectively. The 2016 Workshop
explicitly aims at placing the discourse about the efficiency required in educational provision
within the wider debate on public spending efficiency and effectiveness. For this reason, the
Workshop welcomes theoretical, methodological and empirical papers that use qualitative
and quantitative techniques for assessing the efficiency of organizations operating in various
areas cognate to education.
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Efficiency in Education Workshop, Milan 2016, Call for Papers
We are happy to communicate that the keynote speakers for the conference are:
 prof. Henry Levin (Teachers College, Columbia University): Assessing costeffectiveness in education
 prof. Daniel Santin (Universidad Complutense, Madrid): Methodological challenges
for
assessing
the
efficiency and productivity of public sector providers
More details about academic profile of our keynote speakers below
Submission
Prospective participants can also propose not only single papers, but also entire sessions,
that can share thematic interests or methodological communalities. In this case, please
indicate the name of the Chair responsible for organising the session.
Extended abstracts (max 3/4 pages) or full papers must be submitted by email to
tommaso.agasisti@polimi.it by July 1st, 2016. Notification of acceptance will be sent out by
July 15th, 2016.
Important Dates
July 1th
July 15th
October 1st
October 1st
October 20th and 21st
Deadline for abstract submission
Notification of acceptance
Fee payment and registration
Full paper submission
Workshop
Venue
Politecnico di Milano School of Management, Department of Management, Economics and
Industrial Engineering, via Lambruschini 4b, 20156 Milano (MI) – Italy.
Fees
The participation to the Workshop is subjected to the payment of a fee of € 150.0, which
includes the cost of the conference dinner. The payment must be realized online through
the Workshop’s website (www.efficiencyworkshop.polimi.it).
Workshop’s Program
Will be available in September 2016.
The Workshop will start indicatively around 10 a.m. on October 20th, and will end around
3pm on October 21st.
Contacts
Prof. Tommaso Agasisti (tommaso.agasisti@polimi.it)
Eng. Mara Soncin (mara.soncin@polimi.it)
In collaboration with
 LEER (Leuven Economics of Education Research) and
 TIER (Top Institute for Evidence Based Education Research)
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Efficiency in Education Workshop, Milan 2016, Call for Papers
Keynote speakers’ profile
prof. Daniel Santin
Universidad Complutense, Madrid
Daniel Santín holds a PhD in Economics (Complutense University of Madrid) and is Associate
professor of Public Economics in the Complutense University of Madrid.
He has published his works about the measurement of technical efficiency in education in different
journals including the Journal of Productivity Analysis, European Journal of Operational Research,
Journal of Operational Research Society, Journal of Policy Modeling, Latin American Economic
Review, Computers and Operations Research or Education Economics.
In addition to his academic activity he has worked as consultant about Monitoring and Evaluation of
public policies in different projects funded by the Inter-American Development Bank, the World
Bank, the Spanish Cooperation and Development Agency and the Governments of Spain, Peru,
Paraguay and Cape Verde.
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Efficiency in Education Workshop, Milan 2016, Call for Papers
prof. Henry M. Levin
Teachers College, Columbia University
Henry M. Levin is the William Heard Kilpatrick Professor of Economics and Education at Teachers
College, Columbia University. He is Co-Director of the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in Education,
(www.cbcse.org). He is also the David Jacks Professor of Higher Education and Economics, Emeritus,
at Stanford University where he served from 1968-99 after working as an economist at the
Brookings Institution in Washington. From 1978-84 he was the Director of the Institute for Research
on Educational Finance at Stanford, a federally-funded R. & D. Center. From 1986-2000 Levin served
as the Director of the Accelerated Schools Project, a national school reform initiative for accelerating
the education of at-risk youngsters encompassing about 1,000 schools in 41 states.
Levin has held Fulbright Professorships in Barcelona and Mexico and is on the Guest Faculty at
Peking University and an Honorary Professor at Beijing Normal University. He has been a fellow of
the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the Russell Sage Foundation. He has
received honorary doctorates from Monmouth College, Maastricht University (Netherlands), and the
National University of San Marcos (Peru). He taught for the Fall Semester of 2012 as Distinguished
Visiting Professor at Peking University.
In 1992 the New York Times named him as one of “nine national leaders in education
innovation”. Levin has been the Editor of the Review of Educational Research and the President of
the American Evaluation Association and a winner of its Gunnar Myrdal Award. He is also a recipient
of the Outstanding Service Award of the Association for Educational Finance and Policy and an
elected member of the National Academy of Education. He has been a member and President of the
Palo Alto (CA) School Board and was President (2008-09) of the Comparative and International
Education Society. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Educational Testing Service for 15
years.
Levin is a specialist in the economics of education and human resources and has published 20
books and about 300 articles on these and related subjects. At present he is doing research on
educational reform, educational vouchers, cost-effectiveness analysis, educational privatization, and
benefit-cost studies in education. Recent books he has authored or co-authored or edited
include: Cost-Effectiveness Analysis: Methods and Applications (Sage Publications, 2001); Privatizing
Education (Westview, 2001); Cost-Effectiveness and Educational Policy (Eye on Education, 2002);
Readings in the Economics of Higher Education (Elgar, 2003); Privatizing Educational Choice
(Paradigm Publishers, 2005), The Price We Pay: Economic and Social Costs of Inadequate Education
(Brookings, 2007), and Between Public and Private (Harvard Education Press, 2010).
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