Collaborative Research: The Economics of Port Infrastructure

合作研究：港口基础设施经济学

• 批准号: 2315534
• 负责人: Giulia Brancaccio
• 金额: $ 21.5万
• 依托单位: New York University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-09-01 至 2026-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2315534&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Economics; Port; Infrastructure

This award funds a project in the economics of transportation infrastructure that focuses on the role of shipping ports in international trade. Such infrastructure is crucial for the smooth functioning of international trade. Because more than 80% of traded goods (amounting to 11 billion tons and about $20 trillion) are carried by ships, shipping ports are the literal gateway to international trade. The advent of global sourcing, whereby firms source their inputs from further away suppliers, as well as just-in-production, whereby firms expect their inputs to arrive at the moment they need them, has made ports even more pivotal in recent decades. This became painfully apparent during the “Great Supply Chain Disruptions” induced by the Covid-19 pandemic, which upended supply chains, and generated enormous costs to importers and exporters worldwide, who faced massive delays in obtaining their goods. In this uncertain environment, what are the returns to investing in transportation infrastructure? And how should funding be coordinated and spent? What are the drivers of port performance and why are ports so prone to disruption? This project seeks to provide an answer to these questions, by combining a collection of novel data sets on ports, with a state-of-the-art modeling framework for port technology and demand for port services. The results of this project will be useful for making policy decisions about infrastructure investments, including both where ports should be located, what kinds of investment has the highest returns, and whether or not these decisions should be decentralized. The researchers construct a unique database on global ports that relies on data collected by private providers, as well as their own data collecting efforts. The data includes satellite vessel position data, detailed port charges, as well as union membership. They create a dataset on port infrastructure by manually collecting historical satellite images of world ports from Google Earth. In order to evaluate the role of transportation infrastructure one needs the following ingredients: infrastructure technology to understand both the dynamics of congestion, as well as how investment in infrastructure affects congestion; and a demand system for transportation services. This is necessary both because demand endogenously responds to infrastructure improvements, but also in order to quantify their welfare gains. Using insights from queueing theory, the researchers construct and estimate a micro-model of port technology that takes port inputs, such as infrastructure, labor, cranes, and productivity, and produces output, namely time at port. That setup endogenously generates convex costs of congestion. The researchers then estimate a demand system for port services: potential exporters/importers decide which port to use and obtain utility from lower time at port, shorter distance to their origin and destination, lower port prices, as well as other characteristics of the port. The researchers combine their estimates of technology with their estimates for port demand to estimate the returns to port infrastructure investment. The research advances knowledge by shedding light on how ports operate and how they contributed to the Great Supply Chain Disruption. It takes a deep look into port technology and shows that it renders ports inherently disruptive. This also illustrates the role of uncertainty and the impact of different inputs on resilience.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该奖项资助了一个交通基础设施经济学项目，该项目的重点是航运港口在国际贸易中的作用。这种基础设施对于国际贸易的顺利运作至关重要。由于80%以上的贸易货物(总计110亿吨和约20万亿美元)是由船只运输的，航运港口是通往国际贸易的真正门户。全球采购的出现，使得港口在近几十年来变得更加关键。在全球采购中，公司从更远的供应商那里采购投入，以及在生产中，公司希望他们的投入在需要的时刻到达。这一点在新冠肺炎疫情引发的“供应链大中断”期间变得非常明显，这颠覆了供应链，并给世界各地的进出口商带来了巨大的成本，他们在获得货物方面面临着巨大的延误。在这种不确定的环境下，投资交通基础设施的回报是什么？资金应该如何协调和使用？端口性能的驱动因素是什么？为什么端口如此容易中断？该项目试图通过收集关于港口的新的数据集，并结合最先进的港口技术和港口服务需求的建模框架，为这些问题提供答案。这个项目的结果将有助于制定有关基础设施投资的政策决策，包括港口应该设在哪里，什么样的投资有最高的回报，以及这些决策是否应该分散。研究人员构建了一个关于全球港口的独特数据库，该数据库依赖于私人供应商收集的数据，以及他们自己的数据收集工作。这些数据包括卫星船只位置数据、详细的港口费用以及工会成员。他们通过从谷歌地球手动收集世界港口的历史卫星图像，创建了一个关于港口基础设施的数据集。为了评估交通基础设施的作用，人们需要以下因素：了解拥堵动态以及基础设施投资如何影响拥堵的基础设施技术；以及对交通服务的需求体系。这是必要的，既是因为需求对基础设施的改善做出了内生反应，也是为了量化他们的福利收益。利用排队论的见解，研究人员构建和估计了港口技术的微观模型，该模型接受港口投入，如基础设施、劳动力、起重机和生产率，并产生输出，即在港口停留的时间。这种设置内生地产生了拥堵的凸性成本。然后，研究人员估计了港口服务的需求系统：潜在的出口商/进口商决定使用哪个港口，并从较短的港口停留时间、较短的起点和目的地距离、较低的港口价格以及港口的其他特征获得效用。研究人员将他们对技术的估计与对港口需求的估计相结合，以估计港口基础设施投资的回报。这项研究通过揭示港口如何运作以及它们如何导致供应链大中断来促进知识的进步。它深入研究了端口技术，并表明它使端口具有内在的破坏性。这也说明了不确定性的作用和不同投入对复原力的影响。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。