The Impact of Opening Trade and Direct Shipping across Taiwan Strait to the Growth of Taiwan's Global Container Throughput

開放兩岸貿易與直航對臺灣全球貨櫃吞吐量成長之影響

陳麗瑛(Lee-In Chen) ； 曾柏興(Po-Hsing Tseng) ； 戴輝煌(Hui-Huang Tai)

《航運季刊》 23卷3期 (2014/09) Pp. 1-23

摘要

自臺灣與大陸開放貿易與直航後，臺灣海峽海運貨櫃運量呈現結構性的轉變，而本文探討1990~2012年間影響臺灣貨櫃運量的主要因素。研究結果顯示逐漸開放的兩岸貿易政策使得臺灣的進出口貨物比率逐漸提升，此的確有助於臺灣貨櫃運量成長；此外，兩岸間往來貿易的需求彈性及穩定的規模報酬率在1990~2001年間是顯著的，然而在2002~2012年間則為不顯著，且對臺灣而言其規模報酬是遞減的。在非兩岸因素的檢定上，產業GDP成長的變動（2004~2012年間）對貨櫃運量而言，呈現出顯著的正向效果；而油價的變動則對貨櫃運量呈現出顯著負向效果。綜論之，兩岸間的貿易與航運開放政策，的確有助雙方全球貿易成長，惟對於2002年之後的直航與兩岸經濟合作協議的公平分配效益，仍需有再檢驗的必要。

關鍵字

貿易政策 ； 貨櫃運量 ； 規模報酬 ； 臺灣海峽

並列摘要

There are significant structural shifts in container flows across the Taiwan Strait since the launch of direct shipping between Taiwan and Mainland China in the end of 2008. The purpose of this paper is aiming to identify the main driving forces for the growth of Taiwan's international container throughput via (1) the impact analysis of relaxing trade regulations between Taiwan and China since 1990 up to now, and (2) applying general theories to examine the impact of the establishment of cross-strait direct shipping link on the growth of Taiwan's container throughput from December 2008 up to now. This paper creates two time-related dummy variables to explore the impacts of ＂unilateral＂ import trade constraint and the relaxing ＂bilateral＂ cross-strait shipping regulations on the growth of Taiwan's container throughput in the past two decades. The result shows that (i) relaxing cross-strait trade regulations resulting in gradual rising import-export trade volume which has a positive impact on the growth of Taiwan's international container throughput, and (ii) the demand elasticity and constant return to scale of cross-strait trade (including export and import) to container throughput growth are found to be statistically significant only during 1990-2001, but no significant impact is found in the period of 2002-2012. We conclude that gradually relaxing cross-strait import regulations was a correct and fair policy for both Taiwan and China between 1990 and 2001. However, the impact of direct shipping link and cross-strait economic cooperation negotiations after 2002 should be further examined in the future. Finally, the growth of industrial GDP has positive impact and the fluctuating oil price has a negative impact on the growth of Taiwan's container throughput during 2004 to 2012.

並列關鍵字

Trade policy ； Container throughput ； Return to scale ； Taiwan strait