Análisis de la eficiencia técnica de los principales puertos de América Latina y el Caribe usando Bootstrap

Resumen

The aim of this paper is to analyze the Technical Efficiency of a sample of 13 container ports of Latin America and the Caribbean, which generated movements of more than one million TEUs in the period 2012-2018, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). In the first stage, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been used to obtain the Technical Efficiency, with an output-oriented option: Variable Return Scale (BCC). In a second stage, the bootstrap method has been applied in order to determine efficiency rankings of Latin America and the Caribbean container ports. The main contribution of this article is the application of DEA and Bootstrap models in the study of operational efficiency of the main container terminals in Latin America and the Caribbean. The techniques presented manage to determine, with a high degree of precision, the role played by the main container traffic variables in the operational efficiency of their terminals. They represent a valuable tool for the analysis of the dimensioning of the infrastructures of the ports studied. The models developed in this work have been evaluated through a database obtained from the public entities that manage these ports in Latin America and the Caribbean, but they can be applied in other ports of different countries and/or commercial areas that share the same typology of traffic and characteristics. The corrected efficiency results obtained by the Bootstrap BCC Output-oriented methodology denote some homogeneity in two large groups of ports. The ports with corrected efficiency values above 85%, and low differences between the values obtained in the two methodologies, should develop an analysis of their infrastructures in the short and medium-term. A second group consisting of Cartagena, Freeport, Lazaro Cardenas, San Antonio and Buenos Aires ports, obtain low efficiency values of less than 65% and therefore, should develop a traffic strategy analysis to attract new traffic in order to be efficient.