IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v11y2019i7p2070-d220720.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Belt and Road Initiative and Railway Sector Efficiency—Application of Networked Benchmarking Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Weidong Li

    (School of Economics & Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China)

  • Olli-Pekka Hilmola

    (School of Economics & Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China
    LUT Kouvola, LUT University, Kouvola 45100, Finland)

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a lot of attention paid to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which aims to invest in better connecting China, South-East Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe. As countries that share the same continent, and are in many cases without proper sea connection (landlocked), the key mode of long-distance transportation is railways. However, numerous countries have different levels of past investments, labor productivity, transportation profile, and culture surrounding railways, and all of this leads to differences in overall efficiency. In this research, we apply well established and widely used data envelopment analysis (DEA) to evaluate the longitudinal efficiency of railway operations. This is the first time such an analysis is completed on the Belt and Road member countries. Efficiency itself hardly improved at all during the examination period, whether in passenger and freight or just freight transports. China itself represents an important benchmark for many countries, as its efficiency is all the time highest possible. In the network benchmarking analysis, it was shown that China, Estonia, Latvia, and Israel are often proposed benchmarks for the others to increase their efficiency in the future. From efficiency development perspective, Chinese railway sector is beneficial and more balanced to be benchmarked as compared to other significantly sized railway countries, like India or Russia.

Suggested Citation

  • Weidong Li & Olli-Pekka Hilmola, 2019. "Belt and Road Initiative and Railway Sector Efficiency—Application of Networked Benchmarking Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-21, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:7:p:2070-:d:220720
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/7/2070/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/7/2070/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John Gibson and Chao Li, 2018. "The “Belt and Road Initiative†and comparative regional productivity in China," Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies 201813, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    2. Shaikh, Faheemullah & Ji, Qiang & Fan, Ying, 2016. "Prospects of Pakistan–China Energy and Economic Corridor," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 253-263.
    3. Armstrong, John & Preston, John, 2011. "Alternative railway futures: growth and/or specialisation?," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 19(6), pages 1570-1579.
    4. Chiou, Yu-Chiun & Chen, Yen-Heng, 2006. "Route-based performance evaluation of Taiwanese domestic airlines using data envelopment analysis," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 116-127, March.
    5. Borrett, Stuart R. & Sheble, Laura & Moody, James & Anway, Evan C., 2018. "Bibliometric review of ecological network analysis: 2010–2016," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 382(C), pages 63-82.
    6. Xu, Hangtian, 2016. "Domestic railroad infrastructure and exports: Evidence from the Silk Route," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 129-147.
    7. Pedro Cantos & José Pastor & Lorenzo Serrano, 1999. "Productivity, efficiency and technical change in the European railways: A non-parametric approach," Transportation, Springer, vol. 26(4), pages 337-357, November.
    8. Marchetti, Dalmo & Wanke, Peter F., 2019. "Efficiency in rail transport: Evaluation of the main drivers through meta-analysis with resampling," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 83-100.
    9. WANG, James Jixian & YAU, Selina, 2018. "Case studies on transport infrastructure projects in belt and road initiative: An actor network theory perspective," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 213-223.
    10. Kurosaki, Fumio & Alexandersson, Gunnar, 2018. "Managing unprofitable passenger rail operations in Japan - Lessons from the experience in Sweden," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 460-469.
    11. Olli‐Pekka Hilmola, 2007. "European railway freight transportation and adaptation to demand decline," International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 56(3), pages 205-225, March.
    12. Charnes, A. & Cooper, W. W. & Rhodes, E., 1978. "Measuring the efficiency of decision making units," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 2(6), pages 429-444, November.
    13. Zhang, Weiping & Zhuang, Xintian, 2019. "The stability of Chinese stock network and its mechanism," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 515(C), pages 748-761.
    14. Yang, Dong & Jiang, Liping & Ng, Adolf K.Y., 2018. "One Belt one Road, but several routes: A case study of new emerging trade corridors connecting the Far East to Europe," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 190-204.
    15. John Gibson & Chao Li, 2018. "The “Belt and Road Initiative†and comparative regional productivity in China," Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 5(2), pages 168-181, May.
    16. Jiang, Yonglei & Sheu, Jiuh-Biing & Peng, Zixuan & Yu, Bin, 2018. "Hinterland patterns of China Railway (CR) express in China under the Belt and Road Initiative: A preliminary analysis," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 189-201.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chunyang Pan & William X. Wei & Etayankara Muralidharan & Jia Liao & Bernadette Andreosso-O’Callaghan, 2020. "Does China’s Outward Direct Investment Improve the Institutional Quality of the Belt and Road Countries?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-21, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tavassoli, Mohammad & Faramarzi, Gholam Reza & Farzipoor Saen, Reza, 2014. "Efficiency and effectiveness in airline performance using a SBM-NDEA model in the presence of shared input," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 146-153.
    2. Mahmoudi, Reza & Emrouznejad, Ali & Shetab-Boushehri, Seyyed-Nader & Hejazi, Seyed Reza, 2020. "The origins, development and future directions of data envelopment analysis approach in transportation systems," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    3. Cavaignac, Laurent & Petiot, Romain, 2017. "A quarter century of Data Envelopment Analysis applied to the transport sector: A bibliometric analysis," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 84-96.
    4. Saeedi, Hamid & Behdani, Behzad & Wiegmans, Bart & Zuidwijk, Rob, 2019. "Assessing the technical efficiency of intermodal freight transport chains using a modified network DEA approach," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 66-86.
    5. Ali Kabasakal & Aziz Kutlar & Murat Sarikaya, 2015. "Efficiency determinations of the worldwide railway companies via DEA and contributions of the outputs to the efficiency and TFP by panel regression," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 23(1), pages 69-88, March.
    6. Yuan, Qianqian & Baležentis, Tomas & Shen, Zhiyang & Streimikiene, Dalia, 2021. "Economic and environmental performance of the belt and road countries under convex and nonconvex production technologies," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    7. Chiou, Yu-Chiun & Lan, Lawrence W. & Yen, Barbara T.H., 2012. "Route-based data envelopment analysis models," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 415-425.
    8. Wang, Chao & Lim, Ming K. & Zhang, Xinyi & Zhao, Longfeng & Lee, Paul Tae-Woo, 2020. "Railway and road infrastructure in the Belt and Road Initiative countries: Estimating the impact of transport infrastructure on economic growth," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 288-307.
    9. Shih-Heng Yu & Chia-Wei Hsu, 2020. "A unified extension of super-efficiency in additive data envelopment analysis with integer-valued inputs and outputs: an application to a municipal bus system," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 287(1), pages 515-535, April.
    10. Shao, Yanmin & Sun, Changfu, 2016. "Performance evaluation of China's air routes based on network data envelopment analysis approach," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 67-75.
    11. Mostafa Emrul Wahid & Arifin Sultana & Aditi Chakrovorty, 2020. "Belt And Road Initiative Of China: Perspective Of Bangladesh," Noble International Journal of Social Sciences Research, Noble Academic Publsiher, vol. 5(6), pages 95-101, June.
    12. Jain, Priyanka & Cullinane, Sharon & Cullinane, Kevin, 2008. "The impact of governance development models on urban rail efficiency," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 42(9), pages 1238-1250, November.
    13. Claudio Ferrari & Alessio Tei, 2020. "Effects of BRI strategy on Mediterranean shipping transport," Journal of Shipping and Trade, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 1-18, December.
    14. Kritikos, Manolis N. & Ioannou, George, 2010. "The balanced cargo vehicle routing problem with time windows," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(1), pages 42-51, January.
    15. Ricardo F. Díaz & Blanca Sanchez-Robles, 2020. "Non-Parametric Analysis of Efficiency: An Application to the Pharmaceutical Industry," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(9), pages 1-27, September.
    16. Dewita, Yulia & Yen, Barbara T.H. & Burke, Matthew, 2018. "The effect of transport cost on housing affordability: Experiences from the Bandung Metropolitan Area, Indonesia," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 507-519.
    17. Mohsen Khodakarami & Amir Shabani & Reza Farzipoor Saen, 2016. "Concurrent estimation of efficiency, effectiveness and returns to scale," International Journal of Systems Science, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(5), pages 1202-1220, April.
    18. Zhao, Y. & Triantis, K. & Murray-Tuite, P. & Edara, P., 2011. "Performance measurement of a transportation network with a downtown space reservation system: A network-DEA approach," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(6), pages 1140-1159.
    19. Zhang, Yilin & Zhang, Anming & Wang, Kun & Zheng, Shiyuan & Yang, Hangjun & Hong, Junjie, 2023. "Impact of CR Express and intermodal freight transport competition on China-Europe Route: Emission and welfare implications," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    20. Wetzel, Heike & Growitsch, Christian, 2006. "Economies of Scope in European Railways: An Efficiency Analysis," IWH Discussion Papers 5/2006, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:7:p:2070-:d:220720. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.