Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Airport Financing Structure on Operational Efficiency

Using Malmquist productivity index, the paper compares the operating efficiency of 9 listed airports during the period of 2003—2012. The paper applies panel data regression model to examine the relationship between airport financing structure and efficiency of airport operations. The empirical results show that the operating efficiency of the domestic airports is better than international airports with the highest operational efficiency coming from Hong Kong International Airport. It is found that there is a positive correlation between the efficiency of airport operations and debt proportion of exogenous financing. There is also a negative correlation between endogenous financing in the equity proportion, that is an increase of airport debt financing can facilitate airport operational efficiency and moderately reducing the proportion of the equity of the financing can improve the efficiency of airport operations.