Estimating international trade status of countries from global liner shipping networks

Abstract

Maritime shipping is a backbone of international trade and, thus, the world economy. Cargo-loaded vessels travel from one country's port to another via an underlying port-to-port transport network, contributing to international trade values of countries en route. We hypothesize that ports that involve trans-shipment activities serve as a third-party broker to mediate trade between two foreign countries and contribute to the corresponding country's status in international trade. We test this hypothesis using a port-level dataset of global liner shipping services. We propose two indices that quantify the importance of countries in the global liner shipping network and show that they explain a large amount of variation in individual countries' international trade values and related measures. These results support a long-standing view in maritime economics, which has yet to be directly tested, that countries that are strongly integrated into the global maritime transportation network have enhanced access to global markets and trade opportunities.

An effective distance-based centrality approach for exploring the centrality of maritime shipping network

“…The calculation process of LSCI is similar to the definition of degree centrality in shipping country network. The LSCI released by UNCTAD is currently recognized as one of the most commonly used benchmarks to measure a country's degree of linkage in global trade ( Reza et al., 2015 ; Xu et al., 2020 ). To some extent, the degree centrality of countries in the shipping network has the same function as LSCI.…”

“…Secondly, existing studies upon centrality of shipping network are just based on the geodesic distance between two ports or areas ignoring the actual distance between nodes in shipping network, which may lead to the inappropriate conclusions in the directed and weighted shipping network. Thirdly, most studies on the centrality of shipping networks take ports as nodes in the network, although Xu et al. (2020) pointed out the importance of considering the nationality of ports in the centrality measures.…”

“…(2020) pointed out the importance of considering the nationality of ports in the centrality measures. However, only the betweenness centrality was proposed by Xu et al. (2020) for the global shipping country network.…”

“…In addition, there is a long-standing premise in maritime economics that countries are strongly integrated into the global maritime transportation network have enhanced access to global markets and trade opportunities. Therefore, Xu et al. (2020) pointed that metadata, such as nationality of ports should be considered in centrality measures of shipping network studies.…”

Global Container Port Network Linkages and Topology in 2021

“…Accessibility has been a research hotspot in transport geography and other research areas since its inception in 1959 [ 25 , 26 ]. Shipping accessibility underpins maritime network development, port planning, and economic benefits to regional and national economies [ 27 , 28 ].…”