Free ports are a form of territorial exceptionalism that has existed for centuries and become an important paradigm of globalization. In the contemporary setting, they act as transportation, logistics and trade platforms, using their territorial exceptionalism as a competitive advantage. Free ports such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai are among the world's leading commercial gateways, offering a form of leverage to transactions, transportation and the transformation of material goods. The historical evolution of free ports underlines a growing complexification and specialization that has led to a multitude of models, each fitting a specific regulatory and operational framework. This paper aims rationalizing the complexity of free ports. It is based on a wide array of empirical observations and an analysis of structure, function and evolution of free ports. Collected free ports data enabled the identification of three constitutive factors of evolution: an external factor (the jurisdiction), an internal factor (the services provided) and a linking factor (the orientation of flows). Based on these three factors a model of free ports was designed with a typology of thirteen types of free ports, an explanation of their evolution, and their future prospects.
Although the concept of a free port has existed since antiquity and remains in force today, it does not refer to a single monolithic reality and does not have a universally accepted definition. This article aims to analyze the modern concept of free ports highlighting their place and role in global supply chains in order to provide a better understanding of these key nodal points. In order to reach the definition of free ports used in this article, we rely on a systemic triangulation approach based on the historical, structural, and functional aspects of free ports.
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