Port Efficiency and International Trade Port efficiency as a determinant of maritime transport costs港口效率和国际贸易港口效率作为海运成本的决定因素.pdfVIP

Maritime Economics Logistics, 2003, 5, (199–218) r 2003 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd All rights reserved. 1388-1973/03 $25.00 /mel Port Efficiency and International Trade: Port Efficiency as a Determinant of Maritime Transport Costs ´ 1 2 3 R I C A R D O J SA N C H E Z , J A N H O F F M A N N , A L E J A N D RO M I C C O , 1 ´ 1 G E O R G I N A V P I Z Z O L I T TO , M A RT I N S G U T G O R D O N W I L M S M E I E R 2 1 Au s t r a l U n i v e r s i t y, A r g e n t i n a ; 2 E c o n o m i c C o m m i s s i o n f o r L a t i n A m e r i c a n a n d t h e C a r i b b e a n , S a n t i a g o , C h i l e ; 3 I n t e r - A m e r i c a n D e v e l o p m e n t B a n k , Wa s h i n g t o n , U SA . E - m a i l : r i c a r d o . s a n c h e z @ l y c o s . c o m This paper examines the determinants of waterborne transport costs, with particular emphasis on the efficiency at port level. Its main contribution is (1) to generate statistically quantifiable measures of port efficiency from a survey of Latin American common user ports, and (2) to estimate a model of waterborne transport costs, including the previously generated port efficiency measures as explanatory variables. In order to incorporate different port efficiency measures from the survey, we use principal component analysis (PCA). Our estimations show that the specified variables in the model explain a great proportion of the change in waterborne transport costs. With regard to port efficiency, the result is especially important for one of the port efficiency measures