ICT Factors Affecting Ship Times in Container Ports: Experimental Analysis at Country Level

One of the characteristics of container ports’ performances, on the sea side, is the time of ships in port from the arrival and entrance to the departure from the port. The time of the ship in a container port, by considering the largest ports of a country, is therefore a synthetic indicator of the ability of each country-system to compete in international trade challenges. It is useful to investigate what are the significant characteristics, aggregated at the country level, that determine the average ship time in port. The paper presents an experimental analysis aimed to evaluate the incidence of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and structural port factors on the average ship time in container ports at country level. Some quantitative indicators are used in the evaluation, such as the calibrated parameters, the substitution rates, the elasticities; the observed vs estimated values. The results of the experimentation show that the parameters associated with the attributes considered are negative, i.e. the higher is their value, the shorter is the port time. They are interesting for national port systems, because they could support general policies and financial investments on physical and/or digital port infrastructures in order to improve the performances of a national port system in the global competition.