View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Open Marine Archive JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LOGISTICS AND TRADE 3 Volume 12, Number 2, August 2014, pp.3~35 An Economic and Institutional Analysis of Multi-Port Gateway Regions in the Black Sea Basin Kateryna Grushevska*, Theo Notteboom** _________________________________________________________________________ Abstract The concept of ‘multi-port gateway region’ has been introduced by Notteboom (2010) and has been applied to important seaport markets such as Europe and Asia. However, the dynamics and port development patterns in secondary multi-port gateway regions, such as the Black Sea region, have received far less attention in academic literature. An empirical application of established spatial and functional development models to such secondary port regions might substantiate the external validity of these models as these ports operate in a different spatial, economic and institutional environment. The aim of the paper is to characterize the spatial dynamics of container ports of the Black Sea multi-port gateway regions by testing the validity of established spatial models on port system development. Furthermore, the expected future evolution path for port hierarchy in the Black Sea basin is discussed. By doing so, the paper assesses to what extent the Black Sea port region is following an ‘expected’ development path as portrayed in a number of port system development models, or alternatively, can be characterized as an atypical port system following its own development logic. Key Words : Black Sea, Containers, Gateway, Hinterland, Port system development, Terminal. JEL classification : R40 & R49 * PhD Researcher, ITMMA – University of Antwerp, Kipdorp 59, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium E-mail:
[email protected] ** (corresponding author) President and Professor, ITMMA – University of Antwerp, Kipdorp 59, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium.