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Business cycles in Greek maritime transport: an econometric exploration (1998–2015)

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Abstract

Maritime transport has been a crucial input for the growth of the Greek economy given that the Greek fleet is one of largest merchant fleets in the world. However, the impact of the local and international business cycle on Greek maritime transport is inadequately researched, so far, in the literature. In this context, the present paper investigates the key determinants of maritime transport fluctuations in the three major ports of the Greek hinterland, taking into account a number of variables for the 1998–2015 time-span, capturing, at least partly, the global financial crisis and the local crisis, as well. To this end, various relevant quantitative techniques have been used, such as Granger causality, Dufour and Renault multistep causality and SURE system estimation. Our main finding is that Greek maritime transport traffic, as expressed through the cargo volumes of the three major ports of Piraeus, Volos and Thessaloniki, has not been influenced by the Greek business cycle, implying that the country’s maritime sector is practically independent of the macroeconomic conditions of the total economy. Clearly, future and more extended research would be relevant in the direction of applying the aforementioned approach to other EU countries of the Mediterranean.

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Notes

  1. “The maritime cycle can be defined as a certain temporal sequence of balances and imbalances in supply and demand for the services of maritime markets, which is assimilated in economic theory to a spider’s web in which prices and products behave cyclically” (Tomassian 2011).

  2. After the crisis of 2008 and especially after 2009, there were signs of over-tonnage, where most expansion projects were cancelled or reconsidered, freight rates fell significantly and idle and laid-up ships increased, both nominally and as percentage of the total ships used.

  3. During the period 1995–2011, container trade has increased almost 5 times between Asia and Europe, and about 3 times between Asia and North America.

  4. Until 1999, and for almost 70 years, the port authorities of Piraeus and Thessaloniki (OLP and OLTh respectively) were ‘public law undertakings’, a common scheme for public ownership of the core state. After 1999, the port authorities were transformed into public enterprises though functioning outside the core of the state, an entrepreneurial function quite common in Greece, called DEKO, facilitating the listing in the Stock Exchange Market of Athens (ASE), which was finally succeeded in 2001 for the one of Thessaloniki and in 2003 for the one of Piraeus. This evolution has increased competition between ports, since profit seekers and shareholders were pushing for increase in containership and magnitudes of cargo, as well as decrease of the wages and greater flexibility for the port workers, even though the majority of shares remained under state ownership and the executives were decided by government and ministerial decisions (see also Psaraftis 2007).

  5. The geographical location of each port may be a factor for the placement, according to the magnitude of cargo, in each one of the tiers, along with the proximity with other markets and countries, for example Patras and Igoumenitsa are the main gateways to Italy, whereas the ports of Thessaloniki, Kavala and Alexandroupoli are gateways for goods’ import to Balkans and main gateways for Turkey and the countries of the Black sea and especially Russia. Finally, Volos serves mainly the province of Thessaly and its industrial production and Piraeus and Elefsina are the main cargo ports for the Attica hinterland; Elefsina serves as a complementary to Piraeus cargo port.

  6. The maritime traffic where ports act as intermediate destinations, where cargo is diversified into more than one destination, thus containers are reloaded to other, usually smaller, ships and then are shipped to other or final destinations.

  7. Thessaloniki’s port potential is mainly in transit and not in transshipment, being relatively far from the Suez-Gibraltar shipping route. On the market of transits, Greeks controls only 45.000 TEUs (2012) of the market of 2.5 million TEUs, mainly reaching port of Thessaloniki, partly because until then the train operation in Thriasio had not begun. However, the main reason for the limited use of Greek ports as transit ports is the low competitiveness of Greek and Southern Europe transport Europe (road and rail). Greek container transit market has reached about 1.2 million (estimation for 2015), mainly due to the amelioration of rail infrastructure in Greece, as well as the completion of the road axis of Egnatia (Polyzos et al. 2008).

  8. For the sake of brevity, the empirical results regarding the SBIC criterion for the various procedures are available upon request by the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Technical University of Athens, Zografou, Greece

    Konstantinos N. Konstantakis & Theofanis Papageorgiou

  2. National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Apostolos G. Christopoulos & Ioannis G. Dokas

  3. Laboratory of Theoretical and Applied Economics, Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, School of Applied Mathematical and Physical Sciences, National Technical University of Athens, Heroon Polytechneiou 9, Zografou Campus, 157.80, Zografou, Greece

    Panayotis G. Michaelides

  4. Systemic Risk Centre, London School of Economics, London, UK

    Panayotis G. Michaelides

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  1. Konstantinos N. Konstantakis
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Correspondence to Panayotis G. Michaelides.

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We are indebted to the Editors and the reviewers of this Journal, for their diligent reading of the manuscript and for the constructive feedback. The usual disclaimer applies.

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Konstantakis, K.N., Papageorgiou, T., Christopoulos, A.G. et al. Business cycles in Greek maritime transport: an econometric exploration (1998–2015). Oper Res Int J 19, 1059–1079 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12351-017-0331-8

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