Third, the studies apply to a wide
array of ports beyond Europe and North
America, for example Saeed (2009) for
Pakistan, Wu, Yan and Liu (2009) for Asian
ports, and Lirn, Thanopoulou, Beynon and
Beresford (2004) on a global scale. Fourth,
the interest in competitiveness has been
associated with assessments of port effi -
ciency and performance, increasingly using
quantitative methods, for example Park and
De ’ s (2004) analysis of Korean ports