passenger with a few instances in which tracks are shared locally—and regulatory conflicts arise.

|||**Table 5: R**<br>|**ailways**<br>||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|**Region **|**Data**|**Reference**|**Method (*)**|**Policy relevance**|
|World|46 countries<br>1998-2000|Lan<br>and<br>Lin<br>(2003a)|DF|Distinguishes between efficiency and service<br>effectiveness.<br>Focus on comparison of methodologies and<br>rankings.<br>Shows relevance of environmental variables.|
|World|44 countries<br>1995-2001|Lan<br>and<br>Lin<br>(2003b)|DEA|Highlight<br>relevance<br>of<br>non-traditional<br>performance<br>indicators<br>(e.g.<br>sales<br>effectiveness relating to marketing).<br>Focus on comparison of methodologies and<br>rankings.<br>Argue that conventional models understate<br>productivity.<br>Shows relevance of environmental variables.|
|World|85 rail systems<br>1999|Lan<br>and<br>Lin<br>(2002)|DEA/SPF|Comparison of methods and their use.<br>Shows that LDC and transitions systems are<br>less efficient that OECD in a much larger<br>margin than expected.|
|America including<br>Brazil, Chile and<br>Mexico|5 countries<br>1980-1999|Rivera-Trujillo|SPF (DF)|Finds that technological change effect (2.2%<br>annual average) is higher than technical<br>efficiency for most countries.<br>South American have lower growth rather<br>than North America.|
|Sub-Saharan Africa|9 countries<br>1970-1990|<br>Mbangala<br>and<br>Perelman(1997)|Sequential DEA|Small companies and companies with higher<br>passenger sharesperform better.|
|Sub-Saharan Africa|10 countries<br>1970-1990|Mbgangala<br>(2004)|Sequential DEA<br>and Malmquist<br>TFP index|Provides a regional ranking of operators.|
|Sub-Saharan Africa|1980-2001 10<br>national<br>railways|Mbgangala<br>(2004)|Sequential DEA<br>and Malmquist<br>TFP index|Updates previous ranking of operators.<br>Shows that Interconnection and multimodal<br>transportation need to be developed.|
|Argentina and Brazil|Argentina:<br>1993-1999 5<br>freight,<br>5<br>passenger<br>Brazil:<br>1992-<br>1996 6<br>freight<br>companies|Estache,<br>Gonzalez<br>and<br>Trujillo (2001)|TFP index|TFP growth rates paths revealed the strategic<br>behavior<br>of companies<br>in<br>a<br>price-cap<br>regulatory regime.|
|Brazil|6<br>freight<br>companies<br>1992-2001|Estache,<br>Perelman<br>and<br>Trujillo (2004)|DEA<br>and<br>Malmquist TFP<br>index<br>with<br>quality-quantity<br>decomposition|Incentive work when made as explicit as<br>possible in the design of regulatory regimes.|

(*) SPF: Stochastic Production Frontier; EA: Data Envelopment Analysis; TFP: Total factor froductivity index number A second interesting characteristic of this literature is that because cost minimization assumptions tend to be impossible to measure due to lack of data, most performance studies deal exclusively with physical output and input quantities and most are interested in production efficiency measurement only. In general ton-km or train-km are the main output measurements for freight and passenger-km for passengers. The main inputs tend to be employment, km of tracks—electrified or not--, rolling stock, energy— distinguishing between the various sources. This very pragmatic approaches have not 17