Container shipping trade and real GDP growth: A panel vector autoregressive approach

Co-authored with Nektarios Michail and Dimitris Batzilis . The paper has been published in Economics Bulletin. 2021. Vol. 41, Issue 2, p.304-315

By employing a panel vector autoregressive approach, we show that containership trade is an important determinant of GDP growth. Using the full sample of sea-transported container boxes of 135 countries for ten years, we provide evidence that the amount of TEUs transported, both contemporaneously as well as in the previous year, has a significant positive effect on economic growth.

This can be explained via the fact that TEUs have a positive effect on trade flows between countries and trade flows have long been shown to have a strong positive impact on real GDP growth.