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GTAP Resource #1759

"AN ESTIMATION OF INTERNATIONAL MARITIME CONTAINER VOLUME AMONG ASIAN COUNRTIES BY GTAP MODEL AND SIMULATION ON FTA AND TRANSPORT IMPROVEMENT SCENARIO"
by Shibasaki, Ryuichi


Abstract
Objectives

Due to the globalization and integration of the world economy, the international trade is increasing significantly during the past decades. As the major transport mode at the in the international trade, the international maritime transport is also experiencing the prevailing development. In particular, the ratio of containers arriving in and leaving Asian ports is increasing, keeping in pace with the economic development of these Asian countries. The amounts of international cargoes handled in such hub ports as Hong Kong and Singapore rank now among the tops of the world, to replace the major ports of Europe, the USA and Japan. At the same time, the containerships are becoming larger in pursuit of economies of scale. Now, a hierarchical transport system, or the hub and spoke system, has been established, in which cargoes tend to gather at hub ports with deeper berths and efficient material handling systems. Also, in the pursuit of economies of scale, carriers are going beyond the conventional shipping conference to sealing a more advanced “global allianceEto thoroughly integrate operations within the group across the borders of individual carriers. Intensive as well as strategic port improvement in port structures is urgently needed in Japan, to prevent Japanese port business from being not left far behind these rapidly growing Asian ports.

Against such a background, the author et al. have been developing models which produce network simulations of link flows including use of different types of ships and transshipments, in order to reproduce the actual, but also to estimate the effect of port investment (for example, new birth construction and reduction of handling cost) on, container flows among ports and the amount of handling containers by each port (e.g. Shibasaki, et al. 2004). However, in our models, the amounts of Origin-Destination container cargoes are given so exogenously that we cannot predict the effect of policies which increase container volume itself such as FTA. At all, because transport demand is derived demand by nature, the models which cannot consider that kind of effects would not say to be perfect.

On the other hand, few researches might be thought to focus on the physical volume (i.e. tonnage-base or TEU [Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit: the unit of maritime container cargo] base) of international transportation, especially international maritime container cargo, out of so many researches on world trade with GE framework so that the effects of FTA or transportation efficiency improvement can be predicted.

Therefore, this study proposed a transformation methodology for estimating the international container cargo OD flows and their changes which utilizes the results of the GTAP model under various simulation scenarios. And then, as the applications of this proposed approach, the effects under the FTA scenarios and transport technical progress scenarios under various hypothetical membership combinations among Asian countries, on these countriesEeconomy, social welfare, trade amounts and container OD flows were discussed.

Methodology

The proposed approach is that, first, by using the GTAP model; we can calculate the international trade amounts of commodities among the selected countries. Second, by using the proposed approach, the international trade monetary-based amounts can be transformed into the international container cargo volumes by taking the following steps.

- Step1, to obtain the amount of international maritime transportation in monetary base (US$), using the modal share of maritime transportation out of the all international transportation modal sectors,
- Step 2, to transform the monetary unit to freight-ton unit (FT) for each commodities, using the unit price (US$/FT) by each commodity,
- Step 3, to calculate how much the commodities can be carried by the container cargo, using the containerized ratio by commodity, and
- Step 4, to achieve the container cargo volumes in TEU basis by transforming from freight-ton basis after aggregation, using the transform ratio (FT/TEU).

And we prepared the following scenarios for simulation:
- Scenario 1, FTA. The combinations of FTA countries were i) Japan-Korea, ii) Japan-Korea-China, iii) Japan-ASEAN and iv) Japan-Korea-China-ASEAN. The tariff reductions were from 20% off to 100% off by stepping 20%. It can be set in GTAP by change the shock variable tms,
- Scenario 2, transport technical progress. The same country combinations as FTA scenario were set. The progress ratios were set from 50% down to 50% up by stepping 25%. At the GTAP model, the shock variables were expressed as atf and ats.

Data

For GTAP Database, 5.4 and 6.0 beta version would be compared (actually calculation of version 5.4 has finished). 57 industries sectors are remained as original. 30 countries and regions were selected in order to apply the calculation data for our international transportation network model (Shibasaki, et al. 2004).

For transformation data, all of them were tentatively substituted by Japanese-oriented data. We continue trying to collect these kinds of data of several Asian countries and will replace gradually. Since these materials have the different commodity categories code system with GTAP codes, therefore, they have to be categorized again according GTAP code.

Anticipated findings

From the tentative results (i.e. the results from version 5.4) of the applications at this study, it can show that FTA and transport technical progress both almost have the positive effect on the GDP, trade amount and container OD flows. This kind of effect is increasing by the growth of the number of FTA membership countries. Due to the difference of each country’s industry development level and structure, the GDP of some countries will be decreasing when it join the non-tariff FTA. This is because the import is higher than export. However, in term of the trade amount, it will increase. Consequently, the containerized goods will always increase. The change of the trade pattern generated the new container shipping transport OD flow. Additionally, since the calculation of GTAP model is base on each commodity, in this sense, by using the proposed method, it can show not only the change of total container cargo volume on each OD pair, but also indicate the change of the commodity–based container goods composition on the each routes under these scenarios.


Resource Details (Export Citation) GTAP Keywords
Category: GTAP Application
2005 Conference Paper
Status: Published
By/In: Presented at the 8th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis, Lübeck, Germany
Date: 2005
Version:
Created: Teranishi, H. (5/1/2005)
Updated: Batta, G. (6/21/2005)
Visits: 3,440
No keywords have been specified.


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