Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Efficiency in Maritime Industry

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to complement and extend previous literature reviews on technical efficiency (TE) in Maritime Industry, analysing the effects of different methodologies and studyspecific characteristics on Mean Technical Efficiency (MTE). The researchers independently conducted a systematic review of more than 171 full text papers from four key electronic databases and the results from meta-regression analysis of 35 published papers in maritime industry worldwide are discussed. The variation in the mean indexes in the literature can be explained by the methodology of estimations (parametric, non-parametric), the data collecting scheme and sample size. This study makes two important contributions: first, it updates and compares previous works on frontier estimation efficiency in maritime industry; and second, it has brought in ‘sector’ as another dimension for analysis.