Influence of the geographical pattern of foreign trade on the inland distribution of maritime traffic

Many papers analyse the role of transport infrastructure in the economic development and competitiveness of regions. However, the literature has paid little attention to the impact of the changing patterns of international trade on the use of the infrastructure. The hypothesis of this work is that the evolution of the geographical pattern of countries' foreign trade influences the inland distribution of maritime traffic and, consequently, the use of the infrastructure. The inter-port distribution of the Spanish exports in 2000 and 2015 was analysed in order to confirm the validity of this hypothesis. To that end, the Spatial Interaction Models approach was adopted. The results suggest that the final destination of the flows does influence the inland distribution of the Spanish container flows and, consequently, that the use of the inland transport infrastructure has evolved in line with the geographical pattern of foreign trade.