U.S. Maritime Ports: Trends, Policy Implications, and Research Needs

Major changes in ports and marine shipping in the United States since 1960 resulted from (a) containerization, intermodalism, and increasing scale; (b) reduced rail and over-the-road freight shipping costs; (c) advances in freight logistics and information technology; and (d) the integration of world markets. Consequently, ports face great uncertainty, their benefits are increasingly dispersed and locally less significant, and their adverse impacts remain localized. Yet, fragmented and ineffective public responses remain rooted in a tradition of economies achieved through vast scale and long-lived, inflexible investments spurred by excessive (subsidized) competition. We propose a future-oriented research agenda to improve public policy toward ports through (a) reviews of other nations’ approaches, (b) comparative scholarly case studies of the economic roles of U.S. maritime ports and whether their institutional and funding arrangements match these roles, (c) prospective benefit-cost analyses of publicly funded port expansion plans, and (d) research to identify variables that affect ports and are amenable to policy influence.