PhD Courses in Denmark

Prerequisites

A basic knowledge of quantitative methods and statistics is required; however, the course will revisit and refresh participants’ prior knowledge as needed. The focus will be on practical applications in research and consultancy, with training in the use of open-source software such as R. Participants are expected to bring their own laptops to fully benefit from the hands-on activities.

Aim of the Course

The aim of this course is to introduce the participants to the theory and practice of performance evaluations and their usages in research, policy analyses, incentive schemes and regulation.

Specifically, the objectives are
1. To provide a basic understanding of state-of-the-art benchmarking, efficiency, and productivity analysis methods using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA), and related approaches.

2. To offer training in the practical application of these methods and associated software across various use cases.

3. To discuss the use of performance evaluations for assessing economic systems and designing decision support tools, reallocation mechanisms, and incentive systems.

Background:
Productivity and efficiency analysis is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field that spans economics, management sciences, and statistics. Beyond conducting empirical research on the magnitude, direction, and sources of productivity growth, this field has developed quantitative methods such as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA). These methods, once primarily applied to production settings, have now expanded to a wide range of applications, including environmental studies, development research, education, finance, healthcare, natural resource management, public economics, and sports, among others. 

The tools and approaches of productivity analysis are equally suited for micro-level studies of firms and decision-making units, as well as macro-level cross-country and longitudinal comparisons. Furthermore, their integration with incentive theory, mechanism design, and decision support systems enhances their relevance for normative applications.

Teaching Style

The course (5 ETCS) stretches over five days. Each day will consist of lecturing in the morning and part of the afternoon followed by conceptual discussions, presentation of applications, and hands-on exercises in the afternoon.

In addition, there will be four two-hour Zoom events following the in-class course, during which we will discuss challenging topics, explore new methods, and provide participants with the opportunity to present work-in-progress on efficiency and productivity projects.

For further informaiton and registration please follow the link to the CBS course page