Market Adjustments over Transportation Networks: A Time Series Analysis of Grain Movements on the Mississippi Inland Waterway System

Transport occurs over a network and involves a multitude of different origins, destinations, and modes, which complicates the estimation of structural models. However, an understanding of the type and level of market adjustments among key transport statistics is central to analysing the effects of policy and to forecasting. Time-series techniques are used to characterise the relationship between key transport statistics such as movements on a waterway and shocks to barge rates. Generally, the results suggest that the approach is useful in uncovering complicated relationships over networks and that it is well suited to forecasting. © 2007 LSE and the University of Bath