Growing international trade and increasing congestion focus attention on trade facilitation. Ocean ports are a central and necessary component in facilitating trade. Yet, there is only limited comprehensive information available on the efficiency of ports, much less evidence of the effect of port efficiency on trade. We develop and apply a straightforward approach to estimate port efficiency. T…
As freight transport flows grow continuously, developing better quantitative models for forecasting future trade flows becomes more important. Trade flows can be estimated by discrete choice theory, leading to gravity models formulations. At a given point in time, trade flows may also be affected by long-term contracts or simply trading habits. This leads to situations where only a fraction of …