Container shipping trade and real GDP growth : A panel vector autoregressive approach

By employing a panel vector autoregressive approach, we show that containership trade is an important determinant ofGDP growth. Using the full sample of sea-transported container boxes of 135 countries for ten years, we provideevidence that the amount of TEUs transported, both contemporaneously as well as in the previous year, has asignificant positive effect on economic growth. This can be explained via the fact that TEUs have a positive effect ontrade flows between countries and trade flows have long been shown to have a strong positive impact on real GDPgrowth