The impact of port trade on economic growth: A case study of selected countries

Throughout history, ports have played an important role in economic, political, technical and cultural interaction and development. International integration, which has accelerated with the impact of globalization, has further improved the functionality of ports. The aim of this study is to analyze the relationship between economic growth and port trade with the annual data covering the period 2000-2022 for 11 selected countries. For this purpose, Westerlund (2007) panel cointegration test, Augmented Mean Group (AMG) estimator and Dumitrescu-Hurlin panel causality test are used. After the cointegration test findings confirm that the variables move together in the long run, the long-run coefficients are calculated using the AMG estimator. According to the AMG estimates, port transportation, air transportation and railway transportation do not have a significant effect on economic growth for the whole panel. However, this result varies across countries. Indeed, while port transportation has a positive effect on economic growth in South Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam, India and Turkey, it has a negative effect in the Netherlands, the USA, Japan, Greece and Spain. On the other hand, port transportation has no statistically significant effect on economic growth in Germany. Causality findings show that there is a bidirectional causality relationship between air and railway transportation with economic growth. There is also a unidirectional causal relationship from economic growth to port transportation.