Investment of Private Container Terminal Operators in Port Infrastructure

The paper examines the investment of private container operators in port infrastructure, and then provides a quantitative analysis of a sample of 130 container terminals located in Korea, China, and Japan. The paper finds that the terminal space provided by port operators differed depending on whether a container terminal was run by a national terminal or by a private terminal operator. Private terminals offered larger space to shippers, but compared with national terminals, were not favorably located to connect to the hinterland. To compensate for the poor connectivity to the hinterland and the transfer of delay costs to the shippers, private container terminals offered larger terminal space to the port users