Lu, B.; Park, N., and Huo, Y., 2015. Operational efficiency evaluation of the world's leading container seaports.

It is of great importance for port managers to know whether they have fully used their existing infrastructures and that output has been maximized given the amount of input. From this perspective, data envelopment analysis (DEA) provides a more appropriate benchmark for the container port. By applying three kinds of DEA models, this study acquires a variety of analytical results about operational efficiency of the worlds' leading container ports. According to efficiency value analysis, this study firstly finds out the reason of inefficiency. Then, it is followed by identification of the potential areas of improvement for inefficient ports by applying slack variable method. Furthermore, return to scale approach is used to assess whether each port is in a state of increasing, decreasing, or constant return to scale. Finally, by utilization of the sensitivity analysis, this study can identify which input or output variables are more critical to the model, and which one will have more impact on. The results of this study can provide port managers with insights into resource allocation and optimization of the operating performance.