Spillovers, path dependence and the productive performance of European transportation sectors in the presence of technology heterogeneity

Adopting a metafrontier framework and a second stage system GMM estimation procedure, the technology isolation assumption is relaxed and the role of technological spillovers and path dependence on the productive performance of Air, Land and Water transportation industries of seventeen European countries for the period 1999–2006 is explored. Our main findings suggest that path dependence is a major determinant of the productive performance of the European transportation systems while the technological spillovers are in full operation when the technological advancements are taken into account. Grounded in the empirical results, divergence and clustering processes are sketched out in the productive performance of European transportation systems.