Ricardo J. Sanchez

Reseña de Daniel E. Perrotti, Inversiones en Infraestructura y Crecimiento Económico: Lecciones Aprendidas desde América Latina. Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2024.

Consider two points, A and B, which trade products with a flow imbalance. We postulate that shippers at A face an implicit negotiation with the shippers at B regarding who must bear the cost of a v...

There is not a consensus about a complete set of explanatory variables that could ultimately explain the linkages behind achieving economic development. In spite of this, determinants of economic development and especially the linkages between economic development and logistics performance are topics of growing interest within the recent literature, both in economic growth theory and maritime studies.In this paper our attention is focused on the importance of logistics performance as one of the explanatory variables for economic development. To this end, we have estimated different econometric models in an attempt to explain the probability of a country being economically developed, based on a number of traditional explanatory variables (including natural endowments, economic openness, and institutional framework, among others) along with logistics performance as the major theoretical innovation. The applied methodology follows the binary choice framework described in probit models.In the next step the research is concentrated on the determination of possible endogenous causalities of the economic development. In the last section we estimate the logistics gap, measured as a probability of reaching economic development that varies due to differences in the levels of logistics performance.Our main finding shows that logistics performance is closely related to the probability of a country being developed. Specifically, the probability of being a developed country increases when logistics performance is improved.

Latin America and the Caribbean have evolved as a region of increased interest for the maritime and port industry as well as for academic research. Maritime transport activity in the region has experienced sustained growth rates over the last decades, resulting in ever-increasing demand for maritime services and port infrastructure. At the 2011 Annual Conference of the International Association of Maritime Economists (IAME), Latin America received significant attention. This editorial responds to growing research by giving a brief overview of the current situation and contemporary issues in maritime transport within the region. It also introduces the six selected papers for this Special Issue.

The global and regional economic growth seen in the past decades has triggered a major transformation of the maritime transport sector, the ports, and the logistics. Regarding shipping in particular, ships of a growing size are being allocated to container transport with increasing frequency. This size enlargement has a strategic implication in the planning of ports and its services and related activities. Considering historical data, it can be observed that the large vessels which travel the main maritime routes of worldwide trade need progressively fewer years to reach the coasts of South America. This paper seeks to determine the time span before the largest vessels of the present time (with an average 13 000 TEUS) will reach the South American coasts. Different models were estimated, considering the following factors as explanatory variables for the international maximum vessel size: maritime trade, global economic activity, time span between the appearance of vessels navigating the maritime routes of international trade and their arrival to the coasts of the mentioned region, and the characteristics of the eastern and western South American coasts. As a major finding, it was determined that the vessels of an average 13 000 TEUS would reach South America regularly between 2016 and 2020. These results are interesting in order to warn about the need for an efficient medium-term planning of the port industry and the logistics that could maximize the benefits of its impact on the regional economy.