When container specialisation makes a difference: an efficiency analysis of the Spanish port authorities

There is evidence of specialisation around containerised cargo but also a lack of literature regarding its impact on ports' performance. This paper studies the relationship between the level of containerisation and port efficiency and investigates whether the containerisation-efficiency relatio...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Maritime policy and management 2021-07, Vol.48 (5), p.629-650
Main Authors: Fernández, Xosé Luís, Hidalgo-Gallego, Soraya, Pérez-Urbaneja, Sara, Coto-Millán, Pablo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
competitiveness
container ports
Containers
Efficiency
Port authorities
specialisation
Specialization
Traffic
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:There is evidence of specialisation around containerised cargo but also a lack of literature regarding its impact on ports' performance. This paper studies the relationship between the level of containerisation and port efficiency and investigates whether the containerisation-efficiency relation varies according to the degree of containerisation. To this end, a two-stage procedure is proposed. In the first stage, the efficiency of 26 Spanish port authorities is estimated by meta-frontier DEA techniques. In the second stage, the effect of containerisation on port efficiency is analysed. The results show evidence of threshold effect of container specialisation on port efficiency. Specialisation in container traffic is beneficial for medium-high-complexity ports when they reach a level of specialisation of 40% in container traffic.
ISSN:0308-8839
1464-5254
DOI:10.1080/03088839.2021.1903596