Collaborative Research: The Economics of Port Infrastructure

合作研究：港口基础设施经济学

• 批准号: 2315535
• 负责人: Theodore Papageorgiou
• 金额: $ 20.6万
• 依托单位: Boston College
• 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=2315535&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，重点研究航运港口在国际贸易中的作用。这些基础设施对于国际贸易的顺利运作至关重要。由于超过80%的贸易货物（总计110亿吨，约20万亿美元）由船舶运输，因此航运港口是名副其实的国际贸易门户。全球采购的出现使得港口在最近几十年变得更加重要。全球采购是指企业从更远的供应商那里采购原料，而在生产中，企业期望他们的原料在需要的时候到达。在2019冠状病毒病大流行引发的“供应链大中断”期间，这一点变得痛苦而明显，它颠覆了供应链，给全球进口商和出口商带来了巨大的成本，他们在获得货物方面面临严重延误。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？港口性能的驱动因素是什么？为什么港口如此容易中断？该项目旨在通过将港口新数据集的收集与港口技术和港口服务需求的最先进建模框架相结合，为这些问题提供答案。该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，哪种投资回报最高，以及这些决策是否应该分散。研究人员构建了一个独特的全球港口数据库，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舶位置数据、详细的港口收费以及工会会员资格。他们通过手动收集谷歌地球上世界港口的历史卫星图像，创建了一个港口基础设施的数据集。为了评估交通基础设施的作用，人们需要以下要素：基础设施技术，以了解拥堵的动态，以及基础设施投资如何影响拥堵；以及运输服务需求系统。这是必要的，因为需求内生地响应基础设施的改善，也是为了量化他们的福利收益。利用排队理论的见解，研究人员构建并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、起重机和生产力，并产生产出，即在港口的时间。这种设置会内生地产生拥堵的凸成本。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、较短的出发地和目的地距离、较低的港口价格以及港口的其他特征中获得效用。研究人员将他们对技术的估计与对港口需求的估计结合起来，以估计港口基础设施投资的回报。这项研究通过揭示港口是如何运作的，以及它们是如何导致供应链大断裂的，从而推动了知识的发展。它深入研究了港口技术，并表明它使港口具有固有的破坏性。这也说明了不确定性的作用和不同投入对弹性的影响。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。