Assessment of China transit and economic efficiencies in a modified value-chains DEA model

This study incorporates the concepts of undesirable intermediate, intermediate input, uncontrollable input, and undesirable output to the value-chains model (Chen and Zhu, 2004), thereby creating a modified value-chains model to compute transit and economic efficiencies in 30 regions of China. The modified value-chains model forms a more general formulation to the value-added chains in the utilization of the above concepts; it also provides an optimal intermediate measure which differs from the independent two-stage measure. Empirical evaluations indicate that large-scale transit development in China's coastal area does not necessarily represent higher transit efficiency. Because in the coastal area, there is a lack of significant positive relationships between transit and economic efficiency. High economic efficiency does not contribute to greater transit efficiency. The finding also suggests that by simultaneously decreasing the quantity in passenger and freight transport: transit and economic efficiencies have greatly improved in most regions of China. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.