EDUCATION EFFICIENCY IN BRAZILIAN LOCAL GOVERNMENTS: DOES THE QUALITY OF ACCOUNTING INFORMATION HELP?

Abstract

The paper aimed to investigate the effect of accounting information quality on education technical efficiency in Brazilian local governments. The sample was composed of 3,401 municipalities with data for the 2019 year. We measured the quality of accounting information by National Treasure Secretary, collected in Ranking of Accounting Information Quality, edition 2020. The methodological proceeds used were quantitative in two stages. In the first stage, we measured technical efficiency through the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method, and the Jackstrap technique accomplished the identification and treatment of outliers. In the second stage, technical efficiency was explained through inflated Beta regression. Robust Analysis was accomplished through multiple regression, estimated with Ordinary Least Square (OLS) and robust covariance matrix (HC4). The paper concluded that accounting information quality negatively affected the robust technical efficiency of education in Brazilian local governments. In other words, accounting information quality is correlated with the reduction of education technical efficiency of municipalities. Besides that, outcomes identified that Brazilian local governments have low technical efficiency in education. It is influenced negatively by local Gross Domestic Product (GDP), teacher capacitation, the complexity of school management, and teacher effort.