A Theory of Container Port Production and its Empirical Validation

Abstract

This chapter mainly serves to test the hypotheses formulated in Chapter 2 by using the efficiency results derived in Chapter 5. By so doing, light can be shed on the relevance of fundamental economic theory in underpinning the operation of the container port industry. Despite their respective strengths and weaknesses, as concluded from the analysis presented in Chapter 5, non-parametric and parametric models for analysing efficiency either generate similar estimates of efficiency when utilising cross-sectional data, or the former yield more convincing estimates of efficiency than the latter when significant differences exist between the efficiency scores estimated by the two approaches. For these reasons, in this chapter, the results derived from the non-parametric set of models will constitute the fundamental basis for testing the hypotheses expounded in Chapter 2.