Determinants of public investment for port authorities using port-level data: an analysis of the Spanish port system

Abstract

This study analyses the economic and political determinants of Spanish port authorities' public investment from 2000 to 2016 using port-level data. We distinguish two types of investment: (i) infrastructure and capacity; (ii) logistics and intermodal transport. We estimate the empirical specification considering dynamic effects and endogeneity. Unlike previous empirical studies in which aggregate port investment was considered, our results show that both economic criteria and political factors matter in the Spanish port investment allocation. We also find that the relevance of the political factors differs by the type of port investment. In this sense, we show that the coincidence between the incumbent political party in the central and local governments influences the port investment related to infrastructure and capacity, whereas the coincidence between the incumbent political party in the central and regional governments affects logistics and intermodal transport investment.