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This timely and comprehensive new Handbook brings together an unrivalled group of distinguished scholars and practitioners to provide in-depth analysis and a contemporary perspective on a wide-ranging array of topics in maritime economics. Inherently global in nature, the economics of the maritime sector has proved pivotal in facilitating globalization and international trade. This Handbook offers a unique and indispensable source of reference and information for researchers, students and practitioners interested in the relationship between these developments and maritime markets.

This two volume book presents an in-depth analysis of many of the most important issues facing today's shipping and port sectors. Volume 2 of Dynamic Shipping and Port Development in the Globalized Economy focuses on the emerging trends in ports.

This study analyses how port governance systems in Europe have influenced the implementation of port initiatives focused on promoting modal shifts in freight transportation. Through a comprehensive review of port strategies, this research identified 49 individual modal shift initiatives among 21 port authorities in Europe. The results show that ports located in the Northern regions and managed by local governments, particularly in Belgium and the Netherlands, are leaders in executing strategies for modal shifts in freight transportation. Technological solutions and promoting intermodal transportation were found to be the most popular initiatives used to promote hinterland movements of freight by rail and waterborne transportation.

Although perceived as risk-laden, cyclical businesses with high financial and operating leverage, relatively low beta risks have been documented for the international transportation industry. This paper analyses whether such results are robust to different estimation designs and asserts that previous beta estimates are confounded by sample selection problems. Developing a more representative sample and implementing a number of different estimation designs, a range of industry beta estimates are derived. It is concluded that beta estimates of US-listed international transportation stocks are sensitive to estimation design and that industry beta risk is time-varying. This has implications for the industry cost of capital and pricing policies.

In moving towards a sustainable transport system, the Swedish government has stated that policy actions related to electrification and increasing the share of renewable fuels must be complemented with a modal shift of freight transport from road to rail and sea. The question addressed in this report is whether policies aimed specifically at improving the attractiveness of small ports in Sweden can contribute to an increased use of maritime transport by enabling more competitive services. Small ports are typically considered to be at a disadvantage due to not being able to achieve economies of scale and their lack of connectivity to large trade routes. There are significant economies of scale in port operations but increasing the competitiveness of small and peripheral ports may be key to achieving a modal shift. This study sets out to investigate broadly what would be required for maritime transport services utilizing small ports to be competitive vis-à-vis competing land-based services. Swedish small ports are at a structural disadvantage in several respects. For several small ports, users face higher costs of pilotage due to long and time-consuming navigational approaches. The current structure of fairway dues is not set up to incentivize maritime services consolidating/de-consolidating cargo at several small ports. The sum of port-related costs is high in general, which incentivizes a reduction in the number of port calls and favours a rationalization of avoidable visits at small ports. In order to investigate the potential for small ports to contribute to a modal shift, we simulate the effect of four policy scenarios aimed to improve the competitiveness of maritime freight transport as a modal alternative or to improve the competitiveness of small ports specifically. These scenarios are 1) reducing maritime transport costs, 2) increasing road transport costs, 3) reducing the costs of cargo handling at small Swedish ports and 4) reducing cargo handling times at small Swedish ports. The results show that all simulated scenarios would lead to an increase in the modal share of maritime freight transport. However, the effect of the policies that either reduce maritime transport costs overall or increase road transport costs have a greater effect on the modal split than the policies aimed specifically at small ports. The interesting finding is made that most of the increased maritime tonnage that would follow as a result of more competitive maritime freight services would be absorbed by small ports in the system. The study shows that in order to enact a successful modal shift strategy, small and peripheral ports need be considered as part of the solution. If extending the sea legs of intermodal freight trips is an objective, it is crucial to maintain a geographically diverse and highly functioning port system in order to serve the needs of shippers and cargo owners. We highlight the need for future research to more comprehensively assess how underutilized potential in the entire port system can be used to promote competitive short-sea services as a modal alternative to road.

AbstractThe volume of air passengers and cargo in the Asia‐Pacific region has grown significantly over the past decade due to the strong impetus of economic growth as well as trade and economic integration at both the regional and global levels. Although public funds have been the main source of financing for airports in most parts of the region, governments have increasingly resorted to privatization or are seriously considering it as a form of private sector participation enabling new airports to be built or existing airports to be upgraded. The present paper provides a brief survey of airport privatization in the Asia‐Pacific region, discusses the relevant issues, and introduces the following five papers published in this special section on the air transport industry in the Asia‐Pacific region.