한·중·일 컨테이너항만의 효율성 비교 분석

Measuring the Efficiency of Container Ports in Korea, China and Japan

This paper measures the relative efficiencies of container ports in Korea, Japan and China by using data envelopment analysis (DEA). Competition among container ports in north-east asian region being expected to be more fierce, this study can be helpful to evaluate efficiency of Korean ports and indicate the specific methods for Korean ports to improve efficiencies. The results of this study are as follows. First, in CCR model which assumes constant return to scale, efficiency scores of Busan, Kwangyang and Incheon port are 70.8%, 87.87% and 81.22% respectively. This suggests that container ports in Korea are inefficient compared with chinese ports and Busan is most inefficient among Korean ports. Second, BCC model which assumes variable return to scale shows that efficiency scores of Busan and Kwangyang ports increase up to 100% whereas that of Inchon port is 82.2%. Therefore Busan and Kwangyang ports is very efficient in pure technical aspects, but Incheon port still have room for improvement in technical aspects. Third, scale efficiencies of Busan, Kwangyang and Incheon ports are 70.9%, 87.87% and 98.81% respectively. The fact that scale efficiency is less than 100% assuming variable return to scale means that considerable parts of overall inefficiencies of ports are originated from inappropriate scale. Considering that scale efficiencies of Busan and Kwangyang are less than 100% while pure technical efficiencies of those are 100%, these ports are able to efficient ports by changing their scales appropriately. Meanwhile, pure technical efficiency of Incheon port is much smaller than scale efficiency. This suggest that major cause of overall inefficiency of Incheon port is not inappropriate scale but deficiency in technical aspects. Finally, it is necessary to note that findings and implications of this study should be viewed as tentative since the measurement of efficiency still has potential sources of bias due to limitations on availability of required data. Therefore, there should be more to be done with a variety of data sets and methodologies to fully evaluate the efficiency and competitiveness of container ports.