A critical analysis of DEA applications to seaport economic efficiency measurement

The significant increase in the adoption of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for seaport efficiency measurement renders a literature synthesis and critical analysis of the application of the technique relevant and worthwhile. This paper provides a thorough review and critical analysis of the major studies undertaken to date, and highlights some problems and limitations in the application of the technique in the seaport context particularly in the specification of parameters, the sampling domain and the type of DEA to be applied. The paper informs the decision process as to the merits and limitations of DEA approaches for seaport efficiency measurement and makes a contribution towards methodological improvement by considering variations not yet applied to the port secto

Analysing the Relative Efficiency of Container Terminals of Mercosur using DEA

Maritime transport is extremely important for the world economy, and similarly for the Brazilian economy. The objective of this paper is to analyse the relative efficiency of operations in container terminals of Mercosur in the years of 2002, 2003 and 2004, using the data envelopment analysis technique in a model BCC, with five inputs (number of cranes, number of berths, number of employees, terminal area, amount of yard equipment) and two outputs (TEUs handled and average number of containers handled per hour/ship). The units of analysis are 15 Brazilian, six Argentinean and two Uruguayan container terminals. The analysis shows that 60% of the terminals were efficient in the 3-year period. Benchmarking analysis of Zarate, Rio Cubatão and Teconvi revealed that those terminals served as reference for inefficient terminals more often than other terminals. Maritime Economics & Logistics (2006) 8, 331–346. doi:10.1057/palgrave.mel.9100168

Why Do We Ignore the Risk in Schooling Decisions?

While uncertainty abounds in almost any decision on investment in schooling, it is mostly ignored in research and virtually absent in labour economics text books. This paper documents the scope for risk, discusses the tough disentanglement of heterogeneity and risk, surveys the analytical models, laments the absence of a good workhorse model and points out the challenges worth tackling: document ex ante risk that investors face, develop a tractable and malleable analytical model and integrate the option of consumption smoothing in analytical and empirical work. Hedging labour market risk in the stock market can be safely ignored

Port Efficiency and International Trade: Port Efficiency as a Determinant of Maritime Transport Costs

This paper examines the determinants of waterborne transport costs, with particular emphasis on the efficiency at port level. Its main contribution is (1) to generate statistically quantifiable measures of port efficiency from a survey of Latin American common user ports, and (2) to estimate a model of waterborne transport costs, including the previously generated port efficiency measures as explanatory variables. In order to incorporate different port efficiency measures from the survey, we use principal component analysis (PCA). Our estimations show that the specified variables in the model explain a great proportion of the change in waterborne transport costs. With regard to port efficiency, the result is especially important for one of the port efficiency measures obtained through PCA with an estimated elasticity equivalent to that of distance. Other explanatory variables which show to be statistically significant are the monthly liner service availability, distance, and the goods' value per ton. The conclusions are relevant for policy makers as they show and quantify that port efficiency is a relevant determinant of a country's competitiveness – and in this respect, there still exist big differences among Latin American countries. Unlike most other relevant variables, port efficiency can be influenced by public policies. Maritime Economics & Logistics (2003) 5, 199–218. doi:10.1057/palgrave.mel.9100073