Measuring the Efficiency of Educational Publishers and its Determinants on Efficiency Change

This study used parametric data development analysis (DEA) to estimate the contemporaneous efficiency of 23 educational publishers in Korea from 2018 to 2021. Moreover, we employed a two-stage bootstrapped truncated regression to identify the internal factors affecting the operating efficiencies of educational publishers. According to the DEA results, the technical efficiency (TE) of educational publishers has continued to decline over the past four years, and the average TE has decreased mainly due to scale inefficiency after the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020. In addition, payment fees, rental fees, and transportation costs as strategic operating variables of educational publishers have a statistically significant effect on their efficiency. This study provides practical implications for improving the efficiency and promoting sustainable growth of publishers.