COMPONENTS OF PORT EFFICIENCYThe re

COMPONENTS OF PORT EFFICIENCY
The relationship between port efficiency and waterborne transport costs
In previous work about the relationship between transport costs, economic development and the determinants of international waterborne transport costs, several variables, such as distance, economies of scale, transport insurance components, access to maritime services and the type of market were incorporated (see for example Radelet and Sachs, 1998; Fink et al, 2000; Fuchsluger, 2000; Clark et al, 2001; Limao and Venables, 2001; Micco and Pérez, 2001; Redding and Venables, 2001; Hoffmann, 2002; Kumar and Hoffmann, 2002; Wang et al, 2002). Concerning port efficiency, however, these studies tend to work with proxies, such as GDP per capita, perception surveys, or general infrastructure indicators (ie Global Competitiveness Report), and use data on the national rather than port level. Australian Productivity Commission (1998) uses some partial productivity measures; Martinez et al (2002) allows for different port costs by incorporating dummy variables depending on the port of departure.
Far more detailed research on port efficiency uses stochastic frontiers models or the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) (see for example Roll and Hayuth, 1993; Baños et al, 1999; Martinez et al, 1999; Coto et al, 2000; Gosh and De, 2000; Estache et al, 2001; Tongzon, 2001; Valentine and Gray, 2001). The necessary information requirements to reach these measures tend to make a broad quantitative comparison difficult, and have – to our knowledge – not yet been linked to data on international transport costs.