Determinants of freight volume and efficiency in transportation and storage sector

Abstract

Background: It is observed, in the studies on the factors affecting productivity and performance of the firms, that foreign firms are more successful than domestic firms thanks to their advantages of technological know-how, easy access to capital and modern management practices. Based on these findings, this study aims to measure the efficiency and performance of the companies in transportation and storage sector, which has an increasing share in the GDP of countries, with other industry-specific variables such as nationality and freight volume which are not in the literature. Methods: To reveal the determinants of the freight volume and efficiency of the transportation and storage sector, the study employs Fixed Effect Model for analyzing the aggregate data of the companies in 30 European countries obtained from Eurostat from 2008 to 2018. Results: The main findings in this study indicate that foreign controlled enterprises make a significant difference in terms of both efficiency and freight volume in the sector compared to domestic firms. The empirical results also suggest that investment in tangible goods and apparent productivity of labor serve as factors that are effective on both international and national freight volume. However, we have not found out any evidence for an impact of national enterprises on international and national freight volume. Conclusions: The study shows the importance of nationality of the companies, loaded national and international transportation and apparent labor productivity as the determinants of freight volume and efficiency of the transportation and storage sector. The future researches can extend this study by conducting a firm level analysis.