The calendar of world ports: the weekly rhythm of ship calls, the weekend effect and the global footprint of holidays at 2,065 ports, 2019–2026
Dünya limanlarının takvimi: 2.065 limanda gemi uğraklarının haftalık ritmi, hafta sonu etkisi ve tatillerin küresel izi, 2019–2026
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Abstract
Daily data on port activity are increasingly used for the real-time monitoring of trade, yet how these data vary with the calendar is not systematically known. Using daily port calls derived from satellite-based ship tracking, this study examines 5.9 million port-days at 2,065 ports between 1 January 2019 and 31 October 2026. The weekly rhythm is measured with indices relative to the weekly mean; the effect of holidays is measured with Poisson event-study models that control for day of week, year and seasonality, and with a local-baseline estimator that does not depend on the seasonal model. Worldwide, the number of calls on weekend days is 9.2% lower than on weekdays (95% confidence interval 8.9–9.5); Mondays are 7.3% above the weekly mean. The effect is strongest for general cargo ships and weakest for container ships; it is about twice as large at ports in high-income countries as in the other income groups and has weakened slowly over seven years. The local weekend is decisive: in countries where Friday is a day of rest the dip shifts to Friday, and at Israeli ports Friday calls are 45% below the mean. Lunar New Year reduces calls at Chinese ports by 13% on average over two weeks and container exports by 28% in the following two weeks; about four weeks later this gap appears as a 25% fall in container imports at US West Coast ports. Calls fall by 34% in Europe on Christmas Day and by 68% in Japan at New Year; Eid al-Fitr leads to a 31% fall in Indonesia, whereas no significant effect is found in the Gulf countries. Day of week and holidays explain 64% of the non-seasonal variability in world daily port calls. The findings indicate that daily port data should not be interpreted without removing calendar effects.
Keywords
Port calls; Weekend effect; Calendar effects; Lunar New Year; Ship-tracking data; Real-time trade monitoring; Event study
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