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This paper uses a global computable general equilibrium model, global trade analysis project and a value-to-volume conversion to arrive at quantitative estimates of the new seaborne cargo volumes resulting from a free trade agreement between Taiwan and China, namely, the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA). The approach is designed to model asymmetric impacts of tariff removal and economy-wide interactions caused by the ECFA arriving at estimation in cargo value flows. Then a scientific approach is developed to convert the estimated cargo value flows into volume flows. The analysis concludes that in terms of total trade value, the ECFA liberalisation would induce a trade creation effect across the Strait of more than US$ 30 billions. There is an increase of US$ 26.04 billions in exports to China, which is much higher than imports from China (US$ 4.67 billions). Regarding the converted trade volume, the exports of uncontainerisable and containerisable cargo to China increase by 0.37 and 5.12 million tons (0.43 million TEUs), respectively. The increases in imports from China are relatively minor at 0.19 and 0.75 million tons (0.06 million TEUs) of uncontainerisable and containerisable cargo. Policy implications and suggestions for shipping and port industry are provided accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers a multimodal transportation problem, which is the problem of determining the transportation flow, i.e. volume of container cargoes, and the transportation mode in each trade route, for the objective of minimizing the sum of shipping and inland transportation costs. The problem takes account of two restrictions: maximum cargo volumes capacitated at each seaport and maximum number of vehicles available at each transportation mode. To solve optimally the problem, this paper employs a mixed integer programming, which is an operations research technique. A case study is performed on the container cargo data in Korea and we draw several implications to improve efficiency in the transportation of international trade cargoes in Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one on how the global terminal operators influenced the efficiency of ports, one on port competitiveness and its accessibility and one on the relationships between corporate social responsibility and organisational performance.