Abstract
AbstractThe last decade has seen a significant upsurge of studies seeking to examine the impacts of port agents’ strategic decisions. The outcome has been a wide range of results and conclusions. The aim of this work is to provide a review of this recent research in the port industry that uses strategic interaction approaches from industrial organization and game theory. The paper concentrates on five topics: ownership, relationship between ports and their hinterlands, port authorities and port operators’ relations, capacity investment decisions, and port specialization. We present the objectives, methodologies and results of the papers reviewed, with special emphasis on how models are developed. The results are not always consistent between the works analyzed. On the one hand, this could be due to the complexity of the port industry and the high number of agents that intervene. Researchers need to simplify reality to build their models by imposing restrictive assumptions. On the other hand, results could be very sensitive to the techniques used or to the differences on the port environment of the countries of study. However, some conclusions can be extracted and they present a good starting point to develop more sophisticated models. Finally, we also propose avenues for future research.
Highlights
Globalization, the growth of international trade and the relocation of the main centers of production and consumption have resulted in the need to create new more reliable and efficient supply chains, providing new opportunities for shipping lines, terminals, and other transport operators
Strategic privatization decision depends on transportation costs
In this survey we have reviewed a collection of studies which use game theory approaches to analyze port competition and the strategies behind port managerial decisions
Summary
Globalization, the growth of international trade and the relocation of the main centers of production and consumption have resulted in the need to create new more reliable and efficient supply chains, providing new opportunities for shipping lines, terminals, and other transport operators The rising importance in international trade of emerging economies, such as China or the countries of Southeast Asia, whose exports represented approximately 35% of global exports in 2010 (European Central Bank, Emerging Economies), have intensely increased demand for port services and competition between ports These new developments and trade by ports, which are losing their monopolistic position over the hinterlands because they increasingly overlap with one another have enlarged the reach of markets served. This growth of cargo movements and competition has been accompanied by a wave of privatization through devolution policies around the world which has stimulated further inter-port and intra-port competition
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