Abstract
We develop a two-stage formulation to estimate seaport performance and to understand the drivers of efficiency, which could potentially include specialization, ownership, competition and tariff regulation. The first-stage non-parametric, slacks-based measure estimates the technical efficiency of each port. For the second-stage analysis, we develop a set of contextual variables including an absolute measure of specialization and a berth-level measure of ownership structure. To measure competition, we develop spatial measures that quantify the level of competition as a function of distance. We subsequently apply this formulation to major Indian seaports, covering a period of 21 years, from 1995 to 2015. The first-stage results suggest that average seaport efficiency has increased gradually over time. The second-stage fixed effects regressions show that specialization and external stakeholder participation have significant positive impacts on seaport performance. Perhaps surprisingly, we find that, in a tiered governance framework, competition between major seaports and local seaports has a significant negative impact on performance, potentially due to excessive infrastructure. Finally, changes in the regulatory mechanism over time are shown to be efficiency improving.
| Original language | American English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 507-536 |
| Number of pages | 30 |
| Journal | Maritime Economics and Logistics |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The authors would like to thank the referees of Maritime Economics & Logistics for their valuable feedback, which has helped in improving our paper. Shravana Kumar would like to thank the Erasmus Mundus/ IBIES program and the Dynamics, Tension and Xtreme Events research cluster of the Hochschule Bremen City University of Applied Sciences for the PhD scholarships. He would like to thank the BENCHPORTS project of the Hochschule Bremen City University of Applied Sciences for funding the data collection. He would also like to thank the participants of the WCTRS SIGA2 Conference 2018, Antwerp, Verkehrsökonomik und –politik Konferenz 2019, Berlin, WCTRS Conference 2019, Mumbai, ITEA 2019, Paris and the European Transport Conference 2020, Milan, for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
Funding Information:
Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the referees of Maritime Economics & Logistics for their valuable feedback, which has helped in improving our paper. Shravana Kumar would like to thank the Erasmus Mundus/ IBIES program and the Dynamics, Tension and Xtreme Events research cluster of the Hochschule Bremen City University of Applied Sciences for the PhD scholarships. He would like to thank the BENCHPORTS project of the Hochschule Bremen City University of Applied Sciences for funding the data collection. He would also like to thank the participants of the WCTRS SIGA2 Conference 2018, Antwerp, Verkehrsökonomik und –politik Konferenz 2019, Berlin, WCTRS Conference 2019, Mumbai, ITEA 2019, Paris and the European Transport Conference 2020, Milan, for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).
Keywords
- Competition
- Indian seaports
- Ownership
- Specialization
- Tariff regulation
- Technical efficiency