Measuring a Port’s Performance Using the Real Economic Value of Commodities

The marine transportation system plays a significant role in many economies, and ports serve as gateways to economic activities. Ports ability to provide services depends on their facilities, but ports typically have to compete for federal, state, local and private funding. To allocate scarce resources efficiently and effectively, decision-makers must be able to assess ports performance over time and relative to other ports. Conventionally, tonnage or ton-miles statistics are used in bulk port evaluations. These indicators, however, do not reflect the heterogeneity of ports cargo or the economic value of their service, which makes ports performance comparison difficult. To address these issues, the authors propose three economic port performance measures that add new information decision-makers can use in bulk port assessments: total real value of commodities, average real value per ton, and real value index of a port. Container ports already collect similar data in nominal terms, but bulk ports typically do not. Economists, however, track the real value of commodities when measuring economic performance. Hence, the proposed methodology can be applied to all, container and bulk, ports. Further, total real value and average real value per ton can be used to compare the economic performance of different ports, and real value index of a port can help assess the economic performance of a given port over time. To illustrate how these economic port performance measures can be calculated, the authors use the Port of Duluth-Superior as a case study and produce three series of annual indicators based on publicly available data.

• 
• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AW010(2) AW010 Paper Review Subcommittee.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Simkins, Zamira
  • Stewart, Richard
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2013-1-13 to 2013-1-17
• Date: 2013

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 17p
• Monograph Title: TRB 92nd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Commodities; Economic analysis; Performance measurement; Port operations; Ports; Valuation
• Geographic Terms: Duluth (Minnesota); Superior (Wisconsin)
• Subject Areas: Economics; Freight Transportation; Marine Transportation; Terminals and Facilities; I10: Economics and Administration;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01472578
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 13-1395
• Files: PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 19 2013 8:47AM