Seminar – Understanding port performance and the role of infrastructure

Theodore Papageorgiou, Felter Family Associate Professor of Economics, Boston College

Using a detailed data set on port service and wait times, port infrastructure and labor, we estimate a port “production function”. This micro-model of port technology allows us to answer questions such as, why are ports prone to disruptions, what is the role of port inputs and port productivity and whether a reallocation of inputs and labor in particular can improve port performance.

Speaker bio

Theodore Papageorgiou is the Felter Family Associate Professor of Economics at Boston College. During the 2022-2023 academic year he is a visiting scholar at the Applied Economics group at MIT Sloan.

His main research interests are in labour economics, macroeconomics, as well as the economics of transportation. His research has been published in Econometrica, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Review of Economic Studies. He has also published in top-field journals, including the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics and the Journal of Economic Theory.

Theodore received his BA from the University of Athens and his PhD from Yale University. Prior to joining Boston College, Theodore was on the faculty at Penn State University and McGill University and has held visiting positions at Harvard University and Princeton University. His research has been funded by the NBER and the SSHRC of Canada. He is currently on the editorial board of Economic Theory.

For more information, please contact Emily Brown.