CORRELATION BETWEEN INLAND TRANSPORT EFFICIENCY, GDP AND ENVIRONMENTAL ASPECTS IN EU COUNTRIES

Abstract

Transport is said to be one of the essential sectors of the EU member state economies. Therefore, measurement of the efficiency of transport operations seems to be interesting from the perspective of both the economy as a whole and individual companies operating in the transport sector. Currently however, it is also crucial to pay attention for environmental aspects of transport sector, which describe its sustainability. This idea is supported particularly by developed countries.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the efficiency of road and rail freight transport in old and new European Union countries based on the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and to specify its correlation to CO₂ emission and GDP indicators.

To that end, the authors present a literature review reflecting the current state of research on the importance of transport and its development in relation to the economy and environmental problems. Additionally, the methods of data analysis and variables are described. The last section gives a summary of the study, and the obtained results are compared with data from the literature review.

Key words: efficiency, DEA method, inland transport, environmental effects, GDP