A Small Study on Gravitation Analysis of the Port of Busan to the Import and Export Countries : Application of Gravity Model

부산항의 입출항국가에 대한 유인분석 소고 - 중력모형적용 -

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the gravitation of ship's cargo tons of arriving and leaving port of Busan based on the gravity model empirically and experimentally and to suggest possible ways to expand the trade quantities(cargo tons) by identifying important factors determining the port of Busan's bilateral trade flows with foreign countries by using the 1995, and 2001 data. In this paper, new independent variables, such as land, populations, and the APEC and ASEAN memberships, and new dependent variable, such as the ship's cargo tons of arrival and leaving port of Busan were used for expanding the previous studies. Empirical analysis found that the port of Busan tends to trade more with countries in close proximity and the large size of economies. The fact that the port of Busan's trades more with APEC countries than with non-APEC countries is a clear empirical evidence of the growing importance of the regional trade agreement and strategic alliance with the ports of these member countries. The main policy implication based on the findings of this study is that GDP, distance, adjacency, and APEC membership which were the affecting variables to the bilateral trade with the port of Busan should be closely investigated for enhancing the trade quantities with those foreign countries.