Shipping Firms’ Efficiency Evaluation through Stochastic Frontier Analysis

Abstract

The concept of this study is to note whether financial risk assessment tools impact a shipping firm’s performance, competitiveness and efficiency. Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) is used in the evaluation of such issues. The shipping industry has been classified in three segments, namely dry bulk, tankers (including LPG and LNG) and containers. The influence of the risk assessment indicators on market and operational efficiency is subsequently determined by using a panel regression. This assists to determine whether different asset allocation and risk management techniques improve the performance of shipping firms. Our sample consists of 82 international ship-owning firms drawn from Bloomberg database for the period of 2001-2014. Through estimating efficiency, our model shows that containerized cargo firms have better performance in market and operating efficiency as well.