The Local Impact of Containerization

Leah Brooks, Nicolas Gendron-Carrier and Gisela Rua

No 2018-045, Finance and Economics Discussion Series from Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.)

Abstract: We investigate how containerization impacts local economic activity. Containerization is premised on a simple insight: packaging goods for waterborne trade into a standardized container makes them dramatically cheaper to move. We use a novel cost-shifter instrument -- port depth pre-containerization -- to contend with the non-random adoption of containerization by ports. Container ships sit much deeper in the water than their predecessors, making initially deep ports cheaper to containerize. Consistent with New Economic Geography models, we find that counties near container ports grow an additional 70 percent from 1950 to 2010. Gains predominate in counties with initially low population density and manufacturing.

Keywords: Containerization; Globalization; Local economic activity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F15 F63 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 68 pages
Date: 2018-07-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-int and nep-tre
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

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https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2018045pap.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The local impact of containerization (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2018-45

DOI: 10.17016/FEDS.2018.045

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