Abstract
Education is a crucial factor in the behavior and development of a society. For this reason, it is important to analyze the dynamics of the public sector in the provision of education services. Within this context, the present study aims to analyze the efficiency of the municipal expenses of Paraíba in terms of its basic elementary education. To this end, a stochastic frontier model was used, taking as a result the scores obtained in the Index of Development of Basic Education (IDEB) in the years 2011, 2013, and 2015. The results demonstrated that all indicators are statistically accepted and that the variables “age-grade distortion,” “higher education teachers,” and “number of computers per student” were consistent with the literature. Expenditure has a negative effect on educational performance, suggesting that municipalities in Paraíba are inefficient in allocating resources.
Paraíba; Municipalities; Education; Efficiency