Maritime ports economic effect on regional development: estimations for the major maritime ports in Greece

Abstract

Transport infrastructure assets are key components of the national asset portfolio. The increase of cargo volume enhanced ports as major accelerators of national economic development, increasing the interest in port commercialisation, as governments look for ways to enhance their port efficiency, productivity, competitiveness, and financially viability. Therefore, decisions on commercialisation of ports should be based on quantitative data and analysis of the impacts in the national economy. This paper deals with the estimation of the economic impact in national scale caused by ports development. The methodology provides the quantitative analysis framework and the modelling to estimate the economic impact in both: a) macro-level in terms of economic growth; b) micro-level in terms of business sector distribution, based on input output analysis. The numerical application is the ports in the nation of Greece. The application results highlight key messages to decision makers and stakeholders regarding the economic recovering for an economy suffer by recession.