The impact of public reforms on the productivity of the Spanish ports: a parametric distance function approach

Abstract

This paper tries to analyse the evolution of total factor productivity and its decomposition between 1986 and 2005 in the Spanish port authorities using a parametric distance function approach. Panel data for different outputs and inputs for the last 20 years have been constructed. During this period, the Spanish port authorities suffered three important regulatory changes. The results show that technical progress and scale efficiency gains contributed to improve total factor productivity whereas pure technical efficiency affected negatively. The change in the model of port management from a service port model to a landlord port model, the adoption of certain technologies and the possible existence of overcapacity caused by an increasing port competition, could explain these results.