Efficiency of Mexico's regional innovation systems: an evaluation applying data envelopment analysis (DEA)

The aim of this study is to measure the relative technical efficiency of Mexico ' s regional innovation systems, as defined by its 32 states. Furthermore, there is an interest to establish the relationship between the amount of resources for each regional innovation system (RIS) and its performance in terms of technical efficiency. To this effect, the following hypothesis has been established: Mexican RIS may show similar technical efficiency levels regardless of their relative size, or in other words, the amount of resources and capacities available for each case. By using data envelopment analysis and selected indicators of input and output of the systems, three efficiency scores are calculated for the country's 32 states: overall efficiency, efficiency of patents generation and efficiency of scientific papers production. Additionally, a cluster analysis was performed with the efficiency results based on the index focused on output efficiency obtained in the previous step, and identified five distinct groups. Finally, the results led to the conclusion of the non-existence of a positive relation between the amount of resources of an innovation system and its productivity efficiency.