A new study entitled “The Southern and Central Italian ports: studying potential competitiveness pattern” is online in the section “Ports&Shipping”.

The southern Italian ports are characterised by an ideal location in between the main international Mediterranean maritime routes and the main regional markets. Nevertheless, these ports have recently experienced a slowdown trend in their traffic growth not only caused by the economic cycle but also by a reduction of the investments. As a consequence, several harbours have tried to introduce traffic diversification strategies in order to boost their throughput: for instance expanding the intra-Med ro-ro activity, i.e. an high rate growing market.The present paper aims at analysing the port development plans of the main Italian southern and central ports in order to identify the growth paths in relation to their competitiveness level. This last aspect is discussed through two different analysis: a Shift Share Analysis and a Network Analysis.While the former one aims at comparing the growing rates in specific market segments (i.e. ro-ro), among specific ports and the macro-region, the latter one provides some centrality indexes in order to understand the relative position of each nodes belonging to the maritime network.

The paper ends with some policy prescriptions that could improve the current competitive position of the ports competing in the ro-ro market.

The research (Italian version) can be downloaded for free.
Web registration is required.