Estimating returns to scale for the science and technology activities of Project 985 universities in China

The efficiency of scientific and technological resource utilisation is one of the important issues of concern in the science and technology (S&T) management department in China. The directional returns to scale (RTS) for S&T activities of 38 Project 985 universities in China in 2016 are investigated in this chapter. First, we discuss the input-output indicators used in this investigation. Second, the methods proposed by Yang and Liu (2017) and Yang et al. (2019) are used to analyse the directional RTS and the effect of directional congestion for the S&T activities of 38 Project 985 universities in China. Based on the empirical results, we identify the regions of increasing (constant, decreasing) directional RTS for the S&T activities of each of these universities. This information is quite useful for the future planning of these universities. Furthermore, we find that directional congestion occurs in these universities in many directions. Accordingly, these universities should conduct further analyses to determine the possible reasons for this finding.