TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY ON EUROPEAN CONTAINER TERMINALS 2005-2015

The European Union considers maritime transport as an important axis in its policy. The Integrated Maritime Policy begins a period for establishing a more extensive regulatory framework. Among the objectives of this policy is to maximize the sustainable use of the oceans and seas to enable the growth of maritime and coastal regions. This research assesses the levels of technical efficiency of 35 ports of containerized goods from member countries of the European Union and Turkey. The methodology is based on the stochastic frontier analysis with two different models, one is a Battese and Coelli (1995) approach, and in the second case, a Greene (2005) "true" random effect approach, which allows disentangling time-invariant heterogeneity from time-varying inefficiency. The most important results point out that concern over the reports of sustainability indicators reduces inefficiency. However, automation (semi or total) of container terminals is not always productive. The impact of automation has to be studied carefully in each port because it may be productive depending on the characteristics of the terminal.