Chen, B. and Guo, X., 2020. Public-private partnership and transport infrastructure investment efficiency: Evidence from countries along the 21st-century maritime silk road. In: Li, L. and Huang, X. (eds.), Sustainable Development in Coastal Regions: A Perspective of Environment, Economy, and Technology. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 112, pp. 269-274. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.

The 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative blazes a new path for countries to cooperate for mutual benefits, and transport infrastructure has become the main battlefield for investment. With data from 2000 to 2017, the research adopts Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) to evaluate transport infrastructure investment efficiency of 20 countries along the route. The results show that the average investment efficiency is 0.552 which is in the state of inefficiency, exposing the problems of efficiency loss and resource waste, but still, a yearly increasing trend is evident. The investment efficiency of the developed countries is notably higher, revealing remarkable regional discrepancy and imbalance of development. The research also reveals the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) and the Initiative's positive effect on investment efficiency by empirical examinations. PPP has helped improve investment efficiency overall but PPP in different transport sectors has heterogeneous effect that road and port PPP can significantly promote investment efficiency. The Initiative has also boosted investment efficiency along the route, especially for developing countries. All this proves the superiority and necessity of PPP and the far-reaching significance of this valuable initiative for the sustainable development of all countries.