The Efficiency Estimation in Universities Intellectual Capital: Evidence from EU Countries

The concept of intellectual capital has recently gained prominence as a widely accepted metric for evaluating the economic and social progress of nations and regions. Scholars have also shown a correlation between the efficacy of intellectual capital and the innovation capacity of a nation. Some authors also connect the efficiency of intellectual capital with the innovation potential of the country. The main aim of this paper is to calculate the efficiency score for selected countries, describe their innovation profiles, and compare the most effective and the least effective. For analyses, we selected 27 countries of the European Union. For calculating the efficiency scores of selected countries, we apply a data-enveloped methodology. With the help of DEA methodology, the BCC model was created, and efficiency scores were calculated. The traditional DEA efficiency score was corrected by bootstrapping. Bootstrapping was selected as a tool, which helps to deal with a small amount of data (27 countries) and considers the differences in efficiency estimates. Also, bootstrapping allows a more robust assessment of relative performance. Based on the corrected efficiency score, countries were ranked from the most to the least efficient. According to the results of this study, France was detected as the most efficient and Poland as the least efficient. These two countries were compared by their innovation profiles in the pillar of human capital and research. By describing their innovation profiles in the mentioned pillar, we detected that France is strong in research and development, while Poland is vital in education.