Measuring the technical efficiency of airports in Latin America

This paper studies the technical efficiency of airports in Latin America. The evolution of productive efficiency in the region has seldom been studied, mainly due to lack of publicly available data. Relying on a unique dataset that was obtained through questionnaires distributed to airport operators, the authors use Data Envelopment Analysis methods to compute an efficient production frontier and compare the technical efficiency of Latin American airports relative to airports around the world. In a second stage, they estimate a truncated regression to study the drivers of observed differences in airport efficiency. According to the results, institutional variables (private/public operation), the socioeconomic environment (level of gross domestic product), and airport characteristics (hub airport, share of commercial revenues) matter in explaining airport productive efficiency. Finally, the authors compute total factor productivity changes for Latin American airports for 1995-2007. The region has implemented a wide variety of private sector participation schemes for the operation of airports since the mid 1990s. The results show that private operators have not had higher rates of total factor productivity change.