ABSTRACT
Despite the strong reliance of world trade on maritime transport,1 little has been done to investigate their actual interdependencies. The usefulness of maritime transport to “take the pulse of world trade and movement” (Ullman, 1949) has somewhat faded, while scholars interested in shipping and ports have focused increasingly on operational aspects rather than on broader socio-economic linkages (Ng and Ducruet, 2014). Many reports on world trade and the economy simply ignore maritime transport while focusing primarily on air transport, which is believed to have largely contributed to the shrinking of distances (Nelson, 2008).2 Air transport is also more often associated with the vitality, image, and future of regions and urban growth, whereas ports and shipping have lost their initial socio-economic importance for localities (Jacobs et al., 2010).
