Comparison of Operating Efficiency of Railway Companies in Russian Federation and European Union

Russian Federation has followed some steps of European Union in questions of increasing competition on the railway field. First of all, in 2003 railways was separated from the government (independent manager, accounting separation). In 2011 freight market was opened for a competition. Up to date there are debates about future of Russian railways. Next probable steps are privatization of locomotive park (vertical disintegration) and appearance of private companies in passenger sector (opening of passenger market). In order to estimate relative efficiency of Russian and European Union railway companies efficiency analysis was performed. It was conducted by the usage of non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis. Final sample consisted of information about 77 companies from 19 countries for the time period between 2006 and 2016. Due to high level of disintegration in some countries, it was decided to consolidate information about rail companies on national level. Since DEA method is quite sensitive to outliers it was decided to complete two simulations of DEA: with and without data about Russian Federation in order to see the difference in relative efficiency. Main result of DEA model is that for mix of output and input consisted from information about volume of freight and passenger transportation, number of employees, quantity of the rolling stock owned by railways and length of rail lines Russian Federation achieved relatively to other countries technical efficient level.