Determinants of Maritime Transport Costs

Alejandro Micco () and Natalia Pérez

No 3700, IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank

Abstract: Recent literature has emphasized the importance of transport costs and infrastructure in explaining trade, access to markets, and increases in per capita income. For most Latin American countries, transport costs are a greater barrier to U.S. markets than import tariffs. The authors investigate the determinants of shipping costs to the U.S. with a large database of more than 300,000 observations per year on shipments of products at the six-digit HS level from different ports around the world. In addition, the authors find that efficiency of ports is an important determinant of shipping costs. Inefficient ports also increase handling costs, which are one of the components of shipping costs. The authors try to explain variations in port efficiency and find that they are linked to excessive regulation, the prevalence of organized crime, and the general condition of the country's infrastructure. Finally, the authors present a number of success stories in Latin America to show that private involvement in port management leads to efficiency and lower costs whenever it is accompanied by labor reform, and when monopoly power is reduced through either regulation or competition.

Keywords: maritime tranport costs; maritime industry; port efficiency; harbor management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F1 L41 L92 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-04
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://publications.iadb.org/publications/english ... -Transport-Costs.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Determinants of Maritime Transport Costs (2002)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:idb:brikps:3700

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Felipe Herrera Library ().