Strategic Purity and Efficiency in the Motor Carrier Industry: A Multiyear Panel Investigation
研究了汽车运输公司是专营整车或零担服务还是混合经营更有效率，以及公司规模如何影响这一关系。基于战略纯度和信息处理理论，利用政府面板数据发现专营一种服务类型的公司技术效率最高，且规模仅对专营零担服务的公司有正面影响。
Two questions facing motor carrier managers are (1) whether carriers should specialize in providing full truckload ( TL ) or less‐than‐truckload ( LTL ) services vis‐à‐vis offering mix of both and (2) whether this decision is contingent on carrier size. Yet, the literature provides little guidance because research to date has offered contradictory theoretical predictions and inconsistent empirical findings. Drawing on the theory of strategic purity and information processing theory, we explain why service specialization is likely to increase carriers' technical efficiency and why size will have a more pronounced effect on technical efficiency for carriers specializing in LTL services versus TL services. To test our theory, we assemble a panel data set from archival government sources regarding general freight motor carriers' provision of LTL and TL services. We measure carriers' technical efficiency using data envelopment analysis and test our hypotheses by fitting a series of panel data mixed‐effects models. Our results indicate that carriers are most technically efficient when they specialize in one service type. We also find that size positively affects technical efficiency but only for carriers specializing in LTL services; no returns to scale with regard to technical efficiency exist for carriers specializing in TL services.