Economic Effect of Regulation in Logistics/Transport Industry

This research reviews regulations on logistics/transport industry and attempts to quantify the effects of regulation mitigation on GDP per capita. South Korea’s transport industry has been gradually expanding, however, the industrial structure is still short rooted. In 2014, average number of hours worked is 5th highest and wage margin 12th smallest out of 18 industries. Furthermore, the regulations for this industry appear to be stricter than those of other industries. OECD’s logistics/transport industry regulatory index for South Korea has been decreasing for the last 40 years but still exceeds those of EU, Japan, US, and other countries. This paper provides supporting reasons for regulatory reforms by analyzing the ripple effects on real GDP. Factors such as the ratio of trade among GDP, the enrollment rate to primary school, energy usage per capita, and population are controlled in the fixed-effect model. Estimation results showed that 1 unit decrease in transport/logistics regulatory index is correlated with 8.1% increase of the real GDP per capita, that is, 10% of deregulation is expected to yield 2.16% increase in GDP per capita. Thus, it is expected that mitigating regulations on market entries, price determination, ownership structures of network industry, vertical integrations can improve the economy of South Korea.