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Trade and Transportation Trends of Manufactured Goods in Asia-Europe-Africa

Sohrabi, Alireza | 2014

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 46688 (09)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Civil Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Vaziri, Manouchehr
  7. Abstract:
  8. This research aims to study the trade trends of Manufactured goods, classified chiefly by Material, identified under Code 6 in the Standard International Trade Classification, SITC, and its nine divisions. The study scope covered 125 countries throughout Asia, Europe and Africa and 9 distinct years spanning a 40-year time period between 1965 and 2005. By means of this study, determinant factors for modelling and investigation of trade flow characteristics for the mentioned items can come to be better understood. The time-series data were grouped into four categories: bilateral trade value, socio-economic, geographical and transportation variables, obtained from centralized international databanks. Three transportation parameters were implemented: the air distance, multimodal network distance and trade cost for a defined multimodal network. Following data collection and database development , preliminary and cross-sectional statistical analyses revealed the importance of gross domestic product and transportation variables to trade value. Using an aggregative demand approach, import and export gravity trade models were developed. These models pointed out the most significant factors affecting bilateral trade of manufactured goods. Studying elasticity of trade with respect to the transportation variables through time marked an upward trend in nearly all cases, which in turn highlights the growing influence of both transportation costs and distance on the trade value. Trade sensitivity with respect to trade cost was found to be more significant when compared to multimodal and air distance, emphasizing the importance of transportation costs in shaping the trade flow. A comparison was made between the observed trade trends and optimal trade distributions obtained fromlinear programming in the multimodal distance and cost networks during 1965 to 2005. Results indicated that at both aggregate and divisional levels, actual trade distributions have gradually moved far from the optimal state through time. The differences are slightly greater for transportation cost, hinting that when it comes to freight transportation expenses, there might be more roomfor improvement
  9. Keywords:
  10. Gravity Model ; Linear Programming ; Sensitivity Analysis ; Elasticity ; Multimodal Transportation ; Freight International Transportation ; Freight Transportation Modelling ; Asia-Europe-Africa Region

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