• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
• /
• v.39 no.5
• /
• pp.393-399
• /
• 2015

Recently, the fierce competitions in the shipping industry and the global economic downturn have heavily influenced ports' operational strategies. In order for port authorities to remain competitive at an international level and to provide more accurate information to develop National policies, ports are required to analyse and improve operations' efficiency. In this paper, the efficiency of 19 Italian ports in 2013, handling different types of cargoes, is assessed through the application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), with constant return to scale (CRS) and variable return to scale (VRS). The purpose of this study is to analyze the efficiency of Italian ports and evaluate whether differences in size and specialization of each port (or cargo handled) are directly correlated with ports' efficiency.