• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.91-105
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• 2021

The current increasing size of container vessels affects the container port's situation. The containerization has changed the inter-modal handling process, which brought more flexibility and comfortableness in the shipping industry sector. Thus, it is very crucial to analyze the efficiency of container ports in the regional sphere. Such kind of efficiency analysis provide a powerful management tool for port operators and shipping managers in the Mediterranean market, and it also helps to form an information for planning new regional and national port operations. This paper aims to analyze the ports' technical efficiency of Mediterranean major container ports. It is conducted to establish the model of port performance and efficiency through the empirical test of the various factors. Regarding to the panel data collected from the 48 DMUs (decision making units), this study attempts to provide the empirical basis of the port efficiency relative to another factors in the total port performance. Due to the complexity of the various activities carried out at container ports, the study focuses only on the technical efficiency at the level of the Mediterranean container port. Unlike the practice of cross-sectional data analysis, originally established by Charnes et al. (1985), the panel data in DEA window analysis applications are used. The main focus of this study is the relative technical efficiency of 12 container ports from 7 countries in the Mediterranean market. The selection of ports under study is based on their high handling capability and rankings in World Top 100 (Containerization International, 2018).