Efficiency measurement at major ports of india during the years 2013-14 to 2018-19: a comparison of results obtained from dea model and dea with shannon entropy technique /

Abstract

This paper measured the efficiency at selected container terminals in major ports of India during the period 2013–14 to 2018–19. Ports have proven to be a key node in growth of foreign trade and economic development. With growing containerization, shippers across the world are looking to container terminals that perform at better levels of efficiency and ensure greater cargo throughput. Terminals that operate with proven and consistent efficiency are preferred destinations for shippers. With growing dynamics in the maritime sector, numerous efficiency measurement techniques are evolving that are used by researchers. DEA has been a popular technique to measure efficiency of economic entities and numerous studies using these techniques have measured efficiencies of world ports. However, DEA technique is constrained by the possible number of variables to be selected against the number of decision making units (DMUs). Shannon entropy technique has proved to overcome this constraint in efficiency measurement. Therefore, this study has applied both DEA and Shannon entropy techniques and measured efficiencies of selected container terminals and found that the latter technique can overcome the constraint posed by DEA.