• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.209-239
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• 2008

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of Korean port investment by using the newly developed slack-based multi-year panel congestion model of DEA(Data Envelopment Analysis). Inputs[port investment amount, cargo handling capacity, and berthing capacity], and outputs[cargo handling amount, number of ship calls, revenue, and score of customer service satisfaction] are used during 1994-2004 for 20 Korean seaports. Empirical analysis identified congestion especially in port investment as input at the ports of Gunsan, and Busan in the all 3 models, and the ports of Pyungtag, Mogpo, Yeosu, and leju in over 2 models. Port investment induced the rapid increase of port efficiency from the ports of Masan, Incheon, Donghae, and Samcheok. Therefore other ports except these ports should examine the reason about the inefficiency of port investment by searching out the situation of each ports directly. The main policy implication based on the findings of this study is that The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs in Korea should introduce the new measurement way after reviewing the multi-year slack-based congestion approach when the amount of port investment for each port is decided.