Measuring seaports’ productivity: A Malmquist productivity index decomposition approach

Halkos, George and Tzeremes, Nickolaos (2012): Measuring seaports’ productivity: A Malmquist productivity index decomposition approach.

Abstract

This paper uses three different Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) decompositions to measure Greek seaports’ productivity for the time period 2006-2010. In addition bootstrap techniques are applied in order for confidence intervals of the MPIs and their components to be constructed and therefore to verify if the indicated changes are significant in a statistical sense. Finally, a second stage nonparametric analysis has been applied identifying the effect of seaports’ size on their productivity levels. The results reveal that the number of terminals is a crucial determinant of seaports’ productivity levels. In addition it appears that the high length of Greek seaports has a negative influence on their productivity levels over the years.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Malmquist productivity index; bootstrap approach; Nonparametric analysis; Greek seaports
• Subjects: L - Industrial Organization > L9 - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities > L91 - Transportation: General; D - Microeconomics > D2 - Production and Organizations > D24 - Production ; Cost ; Capital ; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity ; Capacity; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C6 - Mathematical Methods ; Programming Models ; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling > C60 - General

References

Adler, N., Berechman, J., 2001. Measuring quality from the airlines’ viewpoint: an application of data envelopment analysis. Transport Policy 8, 171-181.

Adler, N., Golany, B., 2001. Evaluation of deregulated airline network using data envelopment analysis combined with principal component analysis with an application to Western Europe. European Journal of Operational Research 132, 260-273.

Assaf, A., 2009. Are US airlines really in crisis? Tourism Management 30, 916-921.

Barbot, C., Costa, A., Sochirca, E., 2008. Airlines performance in the new market context: a comparative productivity and efficiency analysis. Journal of Air Transport Management 14, 270-274.

Barros, C.P., 2003. Incentive regulation and efficiency of Portuguese port authorities. Maritime Economics and Logistics 6, 55-69.

Barros, C.P., 2008. Technical change and productivity growth in airports: A case study. Transportation Research Part A 42, 818-832.

Barros, C.P., Athanassiou, M., 2004. Efficiency in European seaports with DEA: Evidence from Greece and Portugal. Maritime Economics and Logistics 6, 120-140.

Barros, C.P., Peypoch, N., 2009. An evaluation of European airlines’ operational performance. International Journal of Production Economics 122, 525-533.

Bonilla, M., Medal, A., Casasus, T., Sala, R., 2002. The traffic in Spanish ports: An efficiency analysis. International Journal of Economics Transport 29, 215-230.

Capobianco, H.M.P., Fernandez, E., 2004. Capital structure in the world airline industry. Transportation Research Part A 38, 421-434.

Chang, K., Kao, P., 1992. The relative efficiency of public versus private municipal bus firms: an application of data envelopment analysis. Journal of Productivity Analysis 3, 67-84.

Chiou, Y.C., Chen, Y.H., 2006. Route-based performance evaluation of Taiwanese domestic airlines using data envelopment analysis. Transportation Research Part E 42, 116-127.

Chu, X., Fielding, G.J., Lamar, B.W. 1992. Measuring transit performance using data envelopment analysis. Transportation Research Part A 26, 223-230.

Cowie, J., Asenova, D. 1999. Organization form, scale effects and efficiency in British bus industry. Transportation 26, 231-248.

Cullinane, K., Song, D.W., Ji, P., Wang, T.F., 2004. An application of DEA windows analysis to container port production efficiency. Review of Network Economics 3, 184-206.

Cullinane, K., Song, D.W., Gray, R., 2002. A stochastic frontier model of the efficiency of major container terminals in Asia: assessing the influence of administrative and ownership structures. Transportation Research Part A 36, 743-762.

Cullinane, K., Wang, T.F., Song, D.W., Ji, P. 2006. The technical efficiency of container ports: Comparing data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier analysis. Transport Research Part A 40, 354-374.

Estache, A., Tavor de la Fe, B., Trujillo, L. 2004. Sources of efficiency gains in port reform: a DEA decomposition of a Malmquist TFP index for Mexico. Utilities Policy 12, 221-230.

Fan, J., 1992. Design-adaptive nonparametric regression. Journal of the American Statistical Association 87, 998-1004.

Fan, J., 1993. Local linear smoothers and their minimax efficiency. Annals of Statistics 21, 196-216. Färe, R., Grosskopf, S., Lindgren, B., Roos, P., 1994a. Productivity Developments in Swedish Hospitals: A Malmquist Output Index Approach. In: Charnes, A., Cooper, W.W., Lewin, A.Y., Seiford, L.M. (eds.), Data Envelopment Analysis: Theory, Methodology and Applications, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston.

Färe, R., Grosskopf, S., Norris, M., Zhang, Z., 1994b. Productivity growth, technical progress, and efficiency change in industrialized countries. American Economic Review 84, 66-83.

Farrell, M., 1957. The measurement of productive efficiency. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A 120, 253-282.

Gilbert, R.A., Wilson, P.W., 1998. Effects of Deregulation on the Productivity of Korean Banks. Journal of Economics and Business 50, 133–155.

Gillen, D., Lall, A., 1997. Developing measures of airport productivity and performance: An application of data envelopment analysis. Transportation Research Part E 33, 261-273.

Gonzalez, M.M., Trujillo, L., 2008. Reforms and infratrusture efficiency in Spain’s container ports. Transportation Research Part A 42, 243-257.

Greer, M.R., 2006. Are the discount carriers actually more efficient than the legacy carriers? A data envelopment analysis. International Journal of Transport Economics 33, 37-55.

Greer, M.R., 2009. Is it the labor unions’ fault? Dissecting the causes of the impaired technical efficiencies of the legacy carriers in the United States. Transportation Research Part A 43, 779-789. Greer M.R. 2008. Nothing focuses the mind on productivity quite like the fear of liquidation: Changes in airline productivity in the United States, 2000-2004. Transportation Research Part A 42, 414-426.

Grosskopf, S., 2003. Some remarks on productivity and its decompositions. Journal of Productivity Analysis 20, 459-474.

Hatry, H.P., 1980. Performance measurement principles and techniques: An overview for local government. Public Productivity Review 4, 312-339.

Hayfield, T., Racine, J.S., 2008. Nonparametric Econometrics: The np Package. Journal of Statistical Software 27, 1-32.

Hoff, A., 2006. Bootstrapping Malmquist Indices for Danish Seiners in the North Sea and Skagerrak. Journal of Applied Statistics 33, 891-907.

Karlaftis, M.G., 2003. Investigating transit production and performance: a programming approach. Transportation Research Part A 37, 225-240.

Kerstens, K., 1996. Technical efficiency measurement and explanation of French urban transit companies. Transportation Research Part A 30, 431-452.

Li, Q., Maasoumi, E., Racine, J.S., 2009. A nonparametric test for equality of distributions with mixed categorical and continuous data. Journal of Econometrics 148, 186-200.

Lovell, C.A.K., 2003. The decomposition of Malmquist productivity indexes. Journal of Productivity Analysis 20, 437-458.

Manzano, J.I.C., Valpuesta, L.L., Perez, J.J., 2008. Economic analysis of the Spanish port sector reform during the 1990s. Transportation Research Part A 42, 1056-1063.

Merkert, R., Hensher, D.A., 2011. The impact of strategic management and fleet planning on airline efficiency: A random effects tobit model based on DEA efficiency scores. Transportation Research Part A 45, 686-695.

Nolan J.F., Ritchie, P.C., Rowcroft, J.E., 2001. Identifying and measuring public policy goals: ISTEA and the US bus transit industry. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 48, 291-304.

Nozick, L.K., Borderas, H., Meyburg, A.H., 1998. Evaluation of travel demand measures and programs: A data envelopment analysis approach. Transportation Research Part A 32, 331-343.

Obeng, K., 1994. Speciffication of long-run cost function to estimate input bias from transit subsidies. Transportation Planning and Technology 18, 187-198.

Odeck, J., 2008. The effect of mergers on efficiency and productivity of public transport services. Transportation Research Part A 42, 696-708. Oum, T.H., You, C., 1998. Cost competitiveness of major airlines: an international comparison. Transport Research Part A 32, 407-422.

Parker, D., 1999. The performance of BAA before and after privatization. Journal of Transport Economics and Policy 33, 133-146.

Peck, M.W., Sheraga, C.A., Boisjoly, R.P. 1998. Assessing the relative efficiency of aircraft maintenance technologies: an application of data envelopment analysis. Transportation Research Part A 32, 261-269.

Quellette, P., Petit, P., Tessier Parent, L.P., Vigeant, S., 2010. Introducing regulation in the measurement of efficiency, with an application to the Canadian air carriers industry. European Journal of Operational Research 200, 216-226.

Ray, S.C., Desli, E., 1997. Productivity growth, technical progress, and efficiency change in industrialized countries: Comment. American Economic Review 87, 1033-1039.

Roll, Y., Hayuth, Y., 1993. Port performance comparison applying data envelopment analysis (DEA). Maritime Policy and Management 20, 153-161.

Sarkis, J., 2000. An analysis of the operational efficiency of major airports in the United States. Journal of Operations Management 18, 335-351.

Sarkis, J., Talluri, S., 2004. Performance based clustering for benchmarking of US airports. Transportation Research Part A 38, 329-346.

Schefczyk, M., 1993. Operational performance of airlines: an extension of traditional measurement paradigms. Strategic Management Journal 14, 301-317.

Scheraga, C.A., 2004. Operational efficiency versus financial mobility in the global airline industry: a data envelopment and tobit analysis. Transportation Research Part A 38, 383-404.

Shephard, R.W., 1970. Theory of Cost and Production Functions. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

Simar, L., Wilson, P.W., 1998a. Productivity Growth in Industrialized Countries Discussion Paper 9810, Institut de Statistique, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.

Simar, L., Wilson, P.W., 1998b. Sensitivity analysis of efficiency scores: how to bootstrap in nonparametric frontier models. Management Science 44, 49–61.

Simar, L., Wilson, P.W., 1999. Estimating and bootstrapping Malmquist indices, European Journal of Operational Research 115, 459-471.

Simar, L., Wilson, P.W., 2000a. A general methodology for Bootstrapping in nonparametric frontier models, Journal of Applied Statistics 27, 779–802.

Simar, L., Wilson, P.W., 2000b. Statistical inference in nonparametric frontier models: the state of the art. Journal of Productivity Analysis 13, 49–78.

Tongzon, J., 2001. Efficiency measurement of selected Australian and other international ports using data envelopment analysis. Transportation Research Part A 35, 107-122.

Viton, P., 1998. Changes in multimode bus transit efficiency, 1988-1992. Transportation 25, 1-21.

Wheelock D.C., Wilson, P.W., 1999. Technical progress, inefficiency, and productivity change in U.S. banking, 1984–1993. Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking 31, 212-234.

Zofio, J., Lovell, C.A.K., 1998. Yet Another Malmquist Productivity Index Decomposition. Working Paper, Department of Economics, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA.