Regions and material flows: investigating the regional branching and industry relatedness of port traffics in a global perspective
分析了全球约360个港口区域的专业化与区域专业化之间的相互依赖关系，发现初级部门与原材料运输、第三产业与一般货物运输之间存在显著关联，为经济地理和区域科学中的交通与地方发展问题提供了实证依据。
This article proposes a quantitative analysis of the interdependencies between port specialization and regional specialization across the world. A global database is elaborated, covering about 360 port regions in both developed and developing countries. One goal is to verify how interdependent port traffic and regional characteristics are, in a context of increasingly flexible commodity and value chains. Despite the aggregated dimension of available data and the heterogeneity of local situations, the main results confirm the affinity between the primary sector and raw materials traffic, and between the tertiary sector and general cargo traffic, whereas the industrial sector offers mixed evidence. This allows us to address fundamental questions raised by both economic geography and regional science about transport and local development. The global typology of port regions points to certain regularities in their spatial distribution, and the article discusses the policy implications of particular cases.