Celebrating Success – Dr Wessel Vermeulen

Congratulations to Wessel on the recent acceptance of his article “Natural Disasters and Trade: The mitigating impact of port substitution” to the Journal of Economic Geography.

A summary of the article:

We estimate the extent of the substitution of exports between ports within a country after a natural disaster. This is relevant as natural disasters become an increasingly frequent phenomenon around the world. We contribute by showing how an economy can be resilient against natural disasters through alternative routes of exports and imports. We use the data from Japan, around the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake to do this, as some ports where hit by a tsunami while other ports were not affected. In the article we provide additional analysis on the type of goods for and the destinations to which port substitution is most prominent. The evidence suggests that goods important for international supply chains are most likely to go through alternative ports.