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Liner connectivity plays an important role as a determinant in how a country is able to gain access to world markets. Liner shipping as the medium of seaborne transport for import and export of manufactured and semi-manufactured goods plays a significant part in international trade, which in turn potentially contribute towards the prosperity of a country and its surrounding region. Liner Shipping Connectivity Index (LSCI) is one of the most common benchmark to see how well connected a country in global trade, where it consists of five components, namely the number of ships, carrying capacity, ship size, services provided, and the number of companies that deploy container ships calling a country’s ports. This paper aims to tally from the most to the least which LSCI component contributes in improving the shipping connectivity with the most impact, in six Maritime South-East Asian countries, i.e., Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. By descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and panel data, this paper finds that the country port’s capacity to accept larger ship size provides the most significant impact towards the improvement of the connectivity in the region. To attract companies to deploy largest ship, the improvement needs to be complemented with the capacity that can meet the expected volume, offering a variety of service, and good turnaround speed at the country’s port. The paper is expected to present not only indicative recommendations on which logistics connectivity initiative needs to be invested first, but also necessary proposals to develop a programme for building the region’s overall logistics industry.

Paper Code: SLC-206

Liner shipping plays a crucial role in facilitating the movement of manufactured goods around the world. While previous literature has shown that liner shipping is an important trade driver, potential differences across trade routes and world regions have not as yet been explored. This paper examines whether the impact of liner shipping on bilateral trade flows differs significantly across world regions, as well as exploring other geographical patterns.

Using state-of-the-art gravity modelling, this paper investigates the impact of the UNCTAD's Liner Shipping Bilateral Connectivity Index on bilateral trade in manufactured goods using a comprehensive database of disaggregated trade data for the period from 2006 to 2019.

The results show that the trade effect of liner shipping is greater in long-distance and interregional bilateral flows. For some regions, such as North America and Oceania, the effect is greater than the world average, while for others, such as Africa and South America, the effect is significantly smaller. The trade effects of liner shipping connectivity on the main east–west routes are average, but clear asymmetry emerges when analysing China's inward and outward trade flows separately.

The results of this paper show that the major east–west routes determine the baseline trade effects of liner shipping, demonstrate that some north–south trades such as those involving Oceania generate larger trade effects and confirm that the trade effects of liner shipping can be improved for some world regions such as South America and Africa.

This paper aims to address the following questions: is good liner shipping connectivity a requisite for merchandise imports plus exports? What is the average of merchandise imports plus exports of the countries neighboring China? Do the merchandise imports plus exports of these countries correspond to each country’s own merchandise imports plus exports or liner shipping connectivity index (LSCI)?

The authors spatially analyze liner shipping connectivity and merchandise imports plus exports using 2016 data and a common framework for linear regression to establish the relationship amongst a country’s LSCI and its merchandise imports plus exports and between its merchandise imports plus exports and those of its neighbors. Merchandise imports plus exports of countries are not necessarily independent of each other, and countries that are contiguous may produce similar observations.

North America and Western Europe comprised clusters of countries that participated more actively in the international trading system, while Africa’s countries had less international trade than average. The study identifies and quantifies the geographical ripple of transport infrastructure on merchandise trade from a national perspective. Notably, a spatially lagged term improved the model’s ability to account for variations in merchandise imports plus exports across countries.

The spatial lag of merchandise imports plus exports can contribute to specifying the spread of merchandise imports plus exports beyond what the authors would anticipate from a country’s network of liner shipping.

This research proposes a framework to conceptualise the potential realm of data regarding shipping connectivity for application of data analytics which can be used to generate deeper insights with respect to the state of such linkages and potential areas for practical application.

The study method involved comprehensive presentation of different perspectives of assessing shipping connectivity and levels of data contained within container shipping services and proposed potential application to analyse profitability, performance, competitiveness, risk and environmental impact.

Advances in capabilities to handle large volumes of data offer scope for an integrated approach which utilises all available data from various stakeholders in analyses of liner shipping connectivity. Research shows how different types of data contained in container shipping services are related and can be organised for application of data analytics.

Research implications are offered to shipping lines, port managers and operators and policymakers.

This research presented a conceptual framework that captures the range of data involved in container shipping services and how data analytics can be practically applied in an integrated manner.

This paper is the first in literature to discuss in detail the different levels of data that reside within shipping services that constitute liner shipping connectivity for application of data analytics.

The liner shipping industry underwent a major round of change between 2014 and 2017 where the concentration ratio of the top ten carriers rose from 64 per cent in 2013 to 82 per cent by 2017. This paper aims to analyze the impact of these developments on the state of shipping connectivity for major container transshipment hubs in Southeast Asia, namely, Port Klang, Singapore and Tanjung Pelepas.

The developments in shipping services deployed before and after the latest round of reshuffling in the liner shipping industry were analyzed.

Significant service rationalization took place in the period that saw 38 per cent reduction in the number of shipping services called at the ports. Participation in alliance arrangement was revealed to be important for shipping lines to compete successfully on the Asia–Europe trade route in the new shipping landscape. Terminal operators should expect further rationalization of services should overcapacity persist. Maintaining hub status would require the ability to accommodate the strategic, operational and commercial requirements of the entire alliance rather than just focusing on the key shipping line.

This is the first paper to examine the effects of the latest round of consolidation in the liner shipping industry. In-depth analyses were conducted for shipping services where the service configuration was examined. The case of Southeast Asia and the Asia–Europe trade route was used to illustrate the impact with managerial and policy implications for shipping lines, terminal operators and port authorities.

The proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) will become a large trade agreement in Asia, which has brought together the ten members of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and five of the neighbors’ countries. Under the trend of globalization, the progress of the transportation industry and regional integration will increase the volume of trade, therefore maritime performance is intrinsically linked to trade. In fact, few studies have examined regional integration in the context of seaborne. This paper aims to use the cluster analysis and Poisson quasi-maximum likelihood (PQML) gravity model to investigate the trading bloc phenomenon and relation between trade and marine transportation.

In this paper, hierarchical clustering analysis and tree diagrams are used to identify functional areas characterized by bilateral trade intensity and bilateral liner shipping connectivity indices. Regional reorganizations that have occurred within Asian countries were studied. This study illustrates that these trading blocs have a positive impact on trade when maritime transport, production and trading networks have developed between regions. A gravity model was constructed using worldwide trade data for 2007, 2010 and 2015. The study considered free trade agreement (FTA)/common market (CM) of EU, RCEP and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as regional dummies and designed a real trade bloc induction variable. In addition, the study did not use the commonly adopted ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation but used the PQML method to estimate the gravity equation to overcome the problem of a large number of zero trade observations. Preliminary results show that regional integration cannot guarantee the establishment of intraregional trade but depends on the stage of economic development and regional industrial characteristics.

The major findings are summarized as follows. Both liner shipping connectivity and logistics performance have significant advantages with positive coefficients in each regression results. The creation of intraregional trade is not guaranteed, depending on the characteristics of the trade and the stage of economic development of the region. For RCEP, the effect created by intra-regional trade is better than the EU. Instead, the “nominal” intra-RCEP trade was significantly below the “real” trading blocs. For RCEP, the effect created by intra-regional trade is better than that of the EU. Instead, “nominal” intra-RCEP trade is much lower than “real” trading blocs. The real trading bloc between East Asia and Taiwan clearly exists, and the bloc phenomenon is becoming more and more significant. This result shows that Taiwan’s trade flow with East Asia is higher than the normal level relationship implied by its corresponding economic and geographical conditions.

This paper focuses on new empirical work done for this study is on the potential impact on trade. Earlier studies that have discussed and/or provided estimates of the benefits to the RCEP plan from improved transport and supply chain connectivity are cited. Marine transportation performance inherently links to economies of commerce. Few studies have examined regional integration in the context of maritime transportation, which reflects the lack of a mix of trade economists and maritime logistics research in the existing literature. This paper attempts to investigate the trading bloc phenomenon formed by regional integration (such as RCEP) and the relation between trade and marine transportation. With the official entry into force of the RCEP in 2020, it will promote increased trade and demand for logistics and maritime transport services in East Asia.

This paper inspects in detail the seasonality (deterministic) in container freight rates, and compares seasonality patterns in different freight rate indices. A deterministic seasonality unit root test is performed to achieve set objectives. This study concludes that all the indices (tested in this paper) exhibit significant deterministic seasonality. For January and August, there is no seasonal effect observed in all five series. At the same time, all the indices except Exports from Europe Rate Index (EEI) exhibit significant seasonal patterns in February, September, and December. All five indices exhibit significant seasonality during May, and the coefficient sign shows a drop in the freight rates. During March, October, and November; it is observed that only EEI exhibit significant seasonal patterns. The results could be beneficial for carriers and agents who are involved in the containerised freight transport business. Also, shippers could get a clear idea about the freight rates' nature across various trade routes.

This article examines the main factors that drive live animal imports in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in the Middle East.

The analysis is based on a gravity model framework, and it incorporates annual data for imports of cattle, sheep and goats during the period 2004–2017 for six countries. The panel estimation technique is employed to disentangle the drivers of the GCC live animal imports.

The results reveal that imports of live animals are consistently positive and statistically significantly correlated with the economic sizes of importer countries, liner shipping connectivity (LSC) (for cattle and goats) and culture (for cattle and sheep). Other determinants include falling tariffs for live cattle imports and falling costs of doing business for live sheep imports. Distance is found to exert statistically significant friction for imports of live goats.

The GCC countries offer substantial opportunities for livestock trade to fulfil the growing demand for meat as a dietary requirement. Countries aiming at the GCC live animal segment of agricultural business would have to ensure reliable access to maritime transport connectivity and better understanding and insights into the business environment, transport logistics, trade policies, economic strength and cultural connections with meat consumption. The food-related supply chain system ought to have an extensive awareness of variables as the findings of this study revealed that can impact exchanges encountered across the supply chains.

Until now, no study has empirically investigated the effect of live animal imports within a coherent trade theoretical framework in the GCC. The novelty of this research is that it makes the first attempt to identify the factors driving the extensive GCC live animal imports for meat consumption with a specific geographical focus. This study also complements the existing sparse empirical literature on trade-in live animals.

This study investigates the effect of economic policy uncertainty on the firm profitability through moderating role of logistics infrastructure index using US non-financial firms listed at NASDAQ.

We used secondary data set which includes firm-level indicators of 2,323 non-financial US firms listed at NASDAQ over the period of 1998–2018. Ordinary least squares regression with multiple fixed effects used to analyze the data and estimate hypotheses.

The results show that economic policy uncertainty negatively impacts the firm’s profitability whereas the logistics infrastructure positively moderates the negative impact of EPU on the firm’s profitability.

Economic policy uncertainty is a significant challenge for managerial decision making and a direct threat to a firm’s profitability. The results of this study imply that the state of logistics infrastructure must be considered as an important policy tool by the senior management to mitigate the negative impact of economic policy uncertainty and to safeguard a firm’s profitability.

This study highlights that logistic infrastructure plays an important role in alleviating the adverse effect of economic policy uncertainty on the profitability of a US non-financial firm.