Economies Of Scope In Higher Education In China

This dissertation is to conduct a systematic analysis on theories of Economies of Scope and to apply it to institutions of higher education in China. The main findings are as followed:(1) Based on data of the universities direcitly under Ministry of Education, we estimate the quadratic and CES cost function and calculate the Global Economies of Scope and Product-specific Economies of Scope on different levels of outputs. We find that the results from two cost functions are different. Using quadratic cost function, there is a change of best production mode from complete joint production to part joint production at the 180% mean output value. While using CES cost function, compared to the part joint production and complete independent production, complete joint production is always the best production mode in all levels of output. Besides, we compare the single product and multi-product quadratic cost function; the results of those two functions are quite similar and different from Cohn et al. (1989). We recommend that Cohn et al. (1989) should change the way to deal with graduate output.(2) We consider teaching and research quality in the quadratic cost function. Using the direct evaluation about teaching and research as the quality proxies, we can describe the teaching and research quality more completely than other similar studies. The results show that there exists Global Economies of Scope and Product-specific Economies of Scope on different levels of outputs after we control the quality. So complex institutions of higher education (IHEs), involving undergraduate and graduate teaching, as well as research, may be more efficient than IHEs specializing in only one (or) two of these missions.(3) We consider the impact of universities type and location on Economies of Scope. Based on the quadratic cost function of chapter 3, we find different types and location of universities have different values of Economies of Scope.(4) We anlyze Economies of Scope in amalgamations and expansions of higher education in China. Followed Lloyd et al. (1993), we calculate the Economies of Amalgamation, Economies of Scope and Economies of Scale. The latter two are decomposized from the former. The empirical results show all values are negative except for the amalgamations between comprehensive universities, comprehensive university and science university, that means almost all of Economies of Amalgamation exist. Economies of Scale are quantitatively much more important than Economies of Scope.