The paper analyses the "feedback effect" of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on

Remuneration for chief executives in UK higher education-known as Vice Chancellors (VCs)-has been on an upward trend in recent years, and VCs have received criticism that their performance does not warrant such reward. We investigate the relationship between VC pay and performance (rooted in principal agent theory), taking into account an array of other possible determinants. Deriving measures of VC performance is difficult as VCs are agents for various principals, and each principal may be interested in a different aspect of performance. We consider three measures of VC performance here: managerial efficiency as measured by data envelopment analysis; performance in university rankings produced by the media; the financial stability of the university. We construct a comprehensive data set, covering academic years 2009/2010 to 2016/2017, a period of considerable change in the UK higher education sector including rapidly-rising undergraduate tuition fees. Our results show that, once other possible determinants of VC pay are taken into account, the main measure of performance which affects VC pay is the one based on media rankings. Thus the agents (VCs) appear to be rewarded for delivering against this performance benchmark which is likely to be of interest to a variety of principals. This result however varies by type of university suggesting that the labour market for VCs differs by mission group.

Data from the Young Lives study are used to evaluate the efficiency of education systems in four low and middle income countries: Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam. A meta‐frontier variant of data envelopment analysis is used to assess the relative performance of each country's system, and, within each country, to evaluate the impact of public and private schooling, and of urban and rural location. Comparisons are drawn between the four countries; the results indicate that in no country does the educational system perform uniformly badly or well. Conditioning on the inputs available, rural areas are often indicative of higher levels of efficiency, thus suggesting a number of implications for policy.

While the evaluation of university efficiency has become commonplace in developed countries, exercises of this kind have rarely been conducted in the context of developing economies. We use frontier methods to analyse the determinants of costs in higher education institutions in India. Results obtained using the standard stochastic frontier model are compared with those from a latent class cost frontier model. Average incremental costs, returns to scale, and returns to scope are evaluated. Despite the relatively small size of average institution, we find that economies of scale are largely exhausted. The implications of various models for the evaluation of institution-level measures of efficiency are highlighted. The results differ in a number of respects from those obtained in more developed countries. Implications of the analysis for policy and practice are highlighted.

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