Urban Regional Disparity and Technical Efficiency of the Tunisian Public Transport System: A Bootstrapped DEA Meta-Frontier

The main objective of this study is to assess the technical efficiency of 12 public regional transport companies (RTCs) in Tunisia from 2008 to 2018, considering urban regional disparities. We employ a bootstrapped meta-frontier (MFB) approach and introduce a unified model that considers the interplay between demand and supply, to calculate various scores. The major findings reveal that RTCs in all regions exhibit overall inefficiency, as indicated by their overall meta-efficiency (MTE) scores falling below 1.0. Notably, RTCs in coastal regions stand out with the highest average score of 0.636, followed closely by RTCs in southern regions at 0.575, while inland RTCs score lower at 0.401. The MTE, a composite measure encompassing both Regional Technical Efficiency (RTE) and Technology Gap (TGP), indicates that the overall inefficiency in coastal and southern RTCs is mainly attributed to the TGP scores, whereas in inland RTCs, TGP and RTE scores have an equal impact.