Mesure de l'efficience des opérateurs ferroviaire en Belgique et en Europe entre 1995 et 2012

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the evolution of the rail market in Europe between 1995 and 2012. At first, we will discuss the history of the trains and the different regulations of the market. From the end of the twentieth century, the European Commission began to end with the public monopoly in order to create a competitive market. Then we will analyse the different outputs of the rail market. We will define three level of output : the infrastructures, the frequency of trains an the number of passengers or goods transported. Historically, the rail market has been considered as a natural monopoly but with the white paper published in 1996 it is becoming a competitive market. To close this segment, we will talk about the competitors of the rails - essentially, the car and the plane - according to the different market segments. After, we will compare the European countries in term of outputs, labour productivity and capital productivity. Some countries as the Baltic states are noticeable because of their very high level of freight. France, Germany and the Netherlands have high values in opposition of countries like North Macedonia, Ireland or Turkey. We will conclude with the measure of the level of efficiency of all the countries. We will use three different models to estimate the production function. If all the methods used give different levels of efficiency across Europe, the results show that the efficiency is time invariant between 1995 and 2012. This is in opposition with the classic economic theories which predict an increase of efficiency when a market is liberalised. However, others papers give the same conclusion than this analysis because of a decrease in the efficiency in the infrastructure operator.