Assessment of the technical efficiency of Brazilian logistic operators using data envelopment analysis and one inflated beta regression

Abstract

In the past two decades logistics services providers have increased their sector participation due to growing outsourcing of these services. In current scenario, logistics operators typically offer service packages that include not only transport itself but also other services in supply chain and transport’s service associated information. This work objective is to identify logistics services packages offered from logistics operators that lead to technical efficiency of operations observed in sector. For this analysis, the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) in two stages methodology was applied, where the first stage consists in the use of DEA models to obtain relative efficiency scores and the second stage consists in the use of one beta inflated regression to analyze the relationship between the technical efficiency scores obtained and the offered services. This study was made with secondary data base available on a logistics’ sector specialized magazine, for the period 2007–2015. Results show that a relationship between the offer of logistics service packages and logistics service providers’ technical efficiency exists. Different for each cluster, the statistically significant service packages vary as the magnitude of contribution on the efficiency measure. Most packages lead to negative contribution on the efficiency, while a few showed positive contributions.