Technical efficiency analysis of shippers using DEA

This study evaluated the technical efficiency of shippers using data envelopment analysis (DEA) techniques. The data including 7365 shipping firms in Korea collected from the 2005 commodity flow survey were used in the analysis. Several DEA models were applied to determine efficiency scores based on both input- and output-orientations which each includes variable returns, constant returns, and non-increasing returns models. Accordingly, the technical and scale efficiency scores of each evaluated shipper in the same industry were measured and the best-practice firms for each industry were identified. Further, in order to handle the number of observed decision units and the diversity of data, the paper performed the cluster-base analysis, including industry-, business-, and spatial-based, to identify the effectiveness of the cluster-based DEA in estimating the efficiency score.