Seaport performance analysis using robust non-parametric efficiency estimators

Seaport services have been developing year on year, playing an increasingly important role in the economy and the transportation markets of each country. This increases interest in measuring their performance. This paper evaluates the performance of a set of European seaports by means of robust non-parametric approaches. Using order-m and bootstrap procedures, the major problems of traditional data envelopment analysis and free disposal hull methods – concerning noise, presence of outliers and the ‘curse of dimensionality’ – are overcome. With this study considerable levels of inefficiency were found in the European seaports sector.