Title: Investigating economic efficiency in Italy: a regional comparison

Authors: Juan Gabriel Brida; Manuela Deidda; Manuela Pulina

Addresses: Competence Centre in Tourism Management and Tourism Economics (TOMTE), School of Economics and Management, Free University of Bolzano, Universitätsplatz 1 – Piazza Università, 1, I – 39100 Bolzano, Italy. ' CRENoS, University of Cagliari, via San Giorgio 12 – 09124 Cagliari, Italy. ' DiSEA and CRENoS, University of Sassari, Via Torre Tonda, 34, 07100 Sassari, Italy

Abstract: This paper provides a comparative analysis of the hospitality sector using the island of Sardinia and the autonomous province of Bolzano as a case study. The comparison holds its own interest since they are both tourism destinations, though characterised by different features as far as seasonality is concerned. Employing a large sample set, pure technical and scale efficiency are computed using a panel data envelopment analysis. Overall, the empirical findings reveal that the hospitality sector in Sardinia and in Bolzano can be regarded as economically inefficient and mostly depicting decreasing returns to scale. Nevertheless, some distinctive features are detected amongst firms classified by size. Policy implications are drawn to help economic agents to improve their efficiency scores, thus leading to an optimal revenue management strategy.

Keywords: panel DEA; data envelopment analysis; economic efficiency; firms size; regional analysis; revenue management; Italy; Sardinia; Bolzano; hospitality industry; tourist destinations; tourism; revenue management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJRM.2012.050383

International Journal of Revenue Management, 2012 Vol.6 No.3/4, pp.175 - 198

Published online: 17 Nov 2012 *

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