INEFFICIENCY OF RAILWAYS IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE – A DEA APPROACH
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Year of publication | 2018 |
Type | Article in Proceedings |
Conference | Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference QUANTITATIVE METHODS IN ECONOMICS Multiple Criteria Decision Making XIX, od s. 120-127, 413 s. 2018. |
MU Faculty or unit | |
Citation | |
web | http://www.fhi.sk/files/katedry/kove/ssov/proceedings/Zbornik2018.pdf |
Keywords | Central and Eastern Europe; DEA; efficiency; railway transport |
Description | Measuring the efficiency of railways is an important issue because railway transport is considered to be an important means of transport by the European Union over the long term. Many studies have dealt with the efficiency of railways in Europe. A few of them have analysed the differences between Eastern and Western Europe. However, these studies have not addressed the identification of problems in terms of a suboptimal ratio of inputs (or outputs) using data envelopment analysis (DEA). Most post-communist Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries are characterized by very low relative efficiency for a number of historical, institutional, and other reasons. The aim of this study is to explore potential factors standing behind the low efficiency of CEE countries using a DEA approach – especially to identify redundant inputs entering the railway transport production process. The study employed DEA based on four inputs (track length, number of employees, and number of cars in passenger and freight transport) and two outputs (passenger-km and tonne-km) and included 24 European countries during 1999–2016. Excessive freight fleet size and overstaffing have been identified as redundant inputs in all CEE countries with the exception of the Baltic republics. |
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