Productivity and returns to scale of container ports

This is an empirical analysis of the performance of the five major container ports of the East Coast of the United States: Boston, New York-New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Hampton Roads. The data through 1978 indicate wide disparities in the productivity of these facilities. They also suggest that container ports exhibit significant returns to scale throughout the range of observation, that is up to 15 Mt a Year. These findings indicate that a national policy of developing small ports is not economically attractive, and that specific investments should be made most carefully.