Creative Education, 2023, 14, 1811-1825 https://www.scirp.org/journal/ce ISSN Online: 2151-4771 ISSN Print: 2151-4755 DOI: 10.4236/ce.2023.149116 Sep. 25, 2023 1811 Creative Education Efficiency of Public Expenditure on Education in Benin: A Comparative Analysis with the Countries of WAEMU Tiburce André Agbidinoukoun 1 , Kuessi Prince Houssou 2* , Ahouidji Tanguy Agbokpanzo 2 , Symphorien Zogbasse 2 , Alastaire Sèna Alinsato 2 1 Western Economy and Management Laboratory (LEGO), University of Western Brittany (UBO), Brest, France 2 Public Economics Laboratory (LEP), University of Abomey-Calavi (UAC), Abomey-Calavi, Benin Abstract This paper analyzes the efficiency of public expenditure on education in Be- nin from 2000 to 2020. Using a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach, the paper calculates the efficiency of public expenditure on education for Be- nin as well as for the other countries of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) in order to highlight the differences in the effi- ciency of the use of public resources in education. The paper uses public ex- penditure on education as an input and the gross enrolment ratio in primary school, the primary school completion rate and the gross tertiary enrolment ratio as outputs for the DEA model. The results indicate that the efficiency score of public expenditure on education in Benin is 0.88. This shows that there is a high degree of efficiency in education. Nevertheless, this result in- dicates that there is room for improvement in the efficiency of public expend- iture on education of 12% for Benin. Also, a comparison of Benin’s efficiency score with those of the other WAEMU countries shows that Benin’s score is outstripped by Togo’s (0.93) and Guinea-Bissau’s (0.95). The efficiency scores for Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger are estimated at 0.68, 0.67, 0.58, 0.56 and 0.51 respectively. The paper suggests that in WAEMU, Benin could draw inspiration from the management of public expenditure on education in Togo and Guinea-Bissau to better identify best practices and policies to improve the efficiency of its public expenditure on education. Keywords Public Expenditure on Education, Efficiency, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) How to cite this paper: Agbidinoukoun, T. A., Houssou, K. P., Agbokpanzo, A. T., Zogbasse, S., & Alinsato, A. S. (2023). Effi- ciency of Public Expenditure on Education in Benin: A Comparative Analysis with the Countries of WAEMU. Creative Education, 14, 1811-1825. https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2023.149116 Received: August 9, 2023 Accepted: September 22, 2023 Published: September 25, 2023 Copyright © 2023 by author(s) and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access