Measuring Physical Productivity Growth and Biased Technological Change in Chinese Airports

Abstract

This paper measures the physical productivity changes for 41 Chinese airports over the 2000-2008 period. The productivity changes link the consideration of environmental factors in decomposed components to a set of indices using the Malmquist productivity approach. The findings suggest that some Chinese airports experienced productivity regress, and should improve their efficiency both in terms of management and scale. By identifying the individual airports that experienced a bias in the production of the relative output of passengers and cargo, this research found that some airports are suitable for developing passenger services, while others might be more suitable for cargo. The empirical results also show that 22 airports experienced runway-using and terminal-saving input bias, 15 airports experienced runway-saving/ terminal-using input bias, and 4 airports experienced neutral technological change.