A competitive analysis of EU ports by fixing spatial and economic dimensions

The purpose of this paper is to measure and compare the efficiencies of ten of the leading European ports. The motivation of the research refers to the relevant topic of selection of indicators that can be involved in the comparative analysis. Concerning the theoretical model, the authors’ efforts are especially directed towards the usage of the Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and of the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). These techniques have been widely adopted for benchmarking and performance evaluation by involving indicators based on data from National Accounts. If one of these indicators, such as labour force consistency, is not available at a specific level of aggregation, detailed assumptions are needed to address this complication. Present study proposes an additive model in order to provide an estimation of ports’ economic activities by fixing the port activity boundaries and the spatial perimeter of the firms investigated, to avoid the exclusion of significant dimensions. Several NUTS (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) levels and NACE (EU Statistical Classification of Economic Activities) codes are fixed to provide homogenous and comparable indicators. Policy actions can refer to the model proposed – and to the SFA and DEA techniques – to verify the potential impact of specific measurements.