Determinants of seaport efficiency: An Analysis of European container ports

Abstract

The present work is aimed to investigate the determinants of the thirty largest European container ports' efficiency, observed during the time period ranging from 2005 to 2018, using a two-step methodology. Initially, the Window Data Envelopment Analysis was applied to measure each single seaport associated efficiency scores. Then, we proceeded with studying the competition and environmental factors relating effects on seaport efficiency via bootstrap truncated regression modeling, through incorporation of time-effects procedure. The attained results turn out to reveal that, contrary to GDP per capita, the number of ship calls, logistic services' quality and quays' length factors prove to display a positive impact on the relevant efficiency scores.Our reached results also indicate well that these European seaports' efficiency tends to decrease with inter-port competition level, owing mainly to over-investment strategies oriented to attract additional users' requests.