Comparing the productivity of Norwegian and some Nordic and UK container ports - an application of Malmquist productivity index

This article measures productivity changes during 2009-2014 of the six largest Norwegian container ports against 14 similar small- and medium-sized ports in the Nordic countries and the UK. The approach used is the data envelopment analysis (DEA)-based Malmquist productivity change index (MPI), which carries out a decomposition isolating the technical progress of the efficiency improvement. The major findings are: 1) the sampled Norwegian ports seem to perform better than their international counterparts in terms of efficiency scores; 2) when productivity growth over time is considered, the Norwegian ports appear to be overperformers but a statistical test proves that they are not; 3) overall, total productivity increased by approximately 0.6% per year for all ports considered and this progress is explained more by technological improvements and less by efficiency change, which declined during the period studied. This study provides Norwegian decision makers with new information regarding the performance of Norway's container port industry.