Abstracts Geography

Concentration in the port industry: alliances, innovations and synergies for the development of door to door logistics

by Theodoros Styliadis

The main driver and motivation of this dissertation is to analyze issues pertaining to the concentration of capital within the port industry. More specifically, it aims to provide a robust and holistic understanding on the realization, motivating powers and evolution of the concentration phenomenon within the containerized transport segments of port terminal operations and liner shipping as well as on the effects it exerts on market competition, port organization and governance. In this framework, this thesis analyzes the role of containerized transport chains within the context of capitalist development while through an adjusted circuitist approach unveils the reproduction mechanism through which transport or commercial capital achieves and accelerates its expanded reproduction. Having portrayed the tendency of commercial (transport) capital towards accumulation, the focus of attention is turned on investigating its evolution. In this vein, while measuring concentration amongst the major market actors in liner shipping and terminal operations, issues relating to market structure, centralization strategies pursued, inter-firm relationships arisen as well as the potential effects of the competitive functioning of the respective markets are discussed. In extension, the effects of market concentration exerted on the conduct of international trade in ports is emprirically examined in two relevant case studies. More specifically, the first employs primary data to investigate the extend to which the formation of liner alliances favors the inclusion of affiliated port terminals in the formers itineraries, while the second utilizes concentration ratios namely, CR4, CR8, HHI, as well as methodological tools such as the Gini Coefficient and Shift-Share analysis to measure the level of concentration/consolidation of container flows in the port system. As results indicate, the diachronic increase in concentration has led to the formulation of an oligopolistic and oligopsonistic market structure in the liner shipping and terminal operators’ markets respectively and hence to the emergence of incumbent firms with significant market share and power. While by itself increased sectoral concentration would be a potential threat to the competitive functioning of the containerized transport market, it has been revealed that market actors, both in liner shipping as well as in container terminal operations, not only have expanded throughout the chain network through successive waves of vertical and horizontal integration, bundling services, but have established robust inter-firm relationships. These facts reinforce their capacity to adopt potentially anti-competitive behavior for their own gain as well as to influence the conduct of international trade (traffic flows) at ports. The empirical results of the two cases studies conducted partly affirm such a claim. Additionally, this thesis examnines whether innovation and knowledge creation act as an underlying force in enhancing the capacity of transport actors to concentrate and solidify…