Decomposing Growth in Portuguese Seaports: A Frontier Cost Approach

This paper analyses the extent of technical change and technical efficiency in Portuguese seaport costs between 1990 and 2000, using a stochastic cost frontier method. A translog frontier and the maximum likelihood estimation technique are employed to estimate the empirical model. The results show that the average score of inefficiency is 39.6%, denoting a high degree of waste in the use of resources, despite the fact that technical change contributed to a reduction of costs.

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