JEMS Maritime Sci. Ahead of Print: JEMS-50479

The Impact of Uncertainty on National Port Throughput: Evidence from European Countries

Bayram Bilge Saðlam, Resul Tepe, Abdullah Açýk
Department of Maritime Business Administration, Maritime Faculty, Dokuz Eylül University, Ýzmir, Turkey

This study investigates the effect of economic policy uncertainty on national port throughputs of selected European countries. For this purpose, we use quarterly observations of 21 European countries covering the periods between 2005 Q1 and 2018 Q3. We utilize the Granger non-causality test for heterogeneous panel data models proposed by Dumitrescu & Hurlin for the analysis. We find that economic policy uncertainty has a considerable impact on port throughputs in the selected sample. Causality tests on individual country level, uncertainties in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Poland, Slovenia, Spain and United Kingdom have an influence over their port throughputs. Moreover, our results indicate cross-sectional dependencies in both variables and this shows that collaborative efforts by European nations are needed in order to avoid the risks that are linked with economic policy uncertainties due to the integrated structure of the countries.

Keywords: Economic Policy Uncertainty, Port Throughput, Panel Causality.

---