Estimating the Effects of the Container Revolution on World Trade

Abstract

Many historical accounts have asserted that containerization triggered complementary technological and organizational changes that revolutionized global freight transport. We are the first to suggest an identification strategy for estimating the effects of the container revolution on world trade. Our empirical strategy exploits time and cross-sectional variation in countries' first adoption of container facilities and combines it with product-level variation in containerizability and container usage. Applying our container variables on a large panel of product level trade flows for the period 1962-1990, our estimates suggest economically large concurrent and cumulative effects of containerization and lend support for the view of containerization being a driver of 20 th century economic globalization. JEL classification: F13Keywords: containerization, 20 th century global transportation infrastructure, growth of world trade.

Estimating international trade status of countries from global liner shipping networks

“…The results were qualitatively the same when we replaced the countrywise trade value by the import value or export value. These results support a long-standing view in maritime economics, which has yet been directly tested, that countries that are more strongly integrated into the global maritime transportation network have better access to global markets and thus greater trade opportunities 9 .…”

“…First, the World Bank has been financing more than 360 port and waterway construction projects in 104 countries and regions since 1950s, with a total investment of more than 21.4 billion US$ 8 . In fact, the growth in trade between a pair of countries was found to be correlated with how early the two countries first adopted port containerization (i.e., processing of container cargos transported by container vessels) 9 . This result suggests that port containerization is a variable that is closely related with world trade growth.…”

Modular gateway-ness connectivity and structural core organization in maritime network science

“…In particular, the finding on the strong and positive association between the structural-core organization of the GLSN and countries' international trade statuses, for the first time, quantifies the relatedness between the network structure of a global maritime transportation system and international trade. Such quantification contributes to wider literature on maritime economics and international trade that pursues understanding how and the extent to which the factors regarding global maritime transportation systems can explain, and may influence, trade between countries and/or individual countries' trade with the rest of the world [3][4][5]53 .…”

“…merchandise imports and exports), and total goods loaded on ships (i.e., total volume of all types of goods loaded on ships): During the period from 1970 to 2016 their respective Pearson correlation coefficients reached 0.99 and 0.98, according to statistics released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development 2 . The importance of maritime transport in supporting international trade makes it indispensable to the sustainable economic development of our world [3][4][5] . For individual economies, access to world markets depends largely on their transport connectivity, especially as regards liner shipping (i.e., the service of transporting goods primarily by ocean-going container ships that transit regular routes on fixed schedule).…”

Profiting from innovation in the digital economy: Enabling technologies, standards, and licensing models in the wireless world

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