Abstract: Modelling and forecasting port traffic are of major importance for the shipping industry. Existence of chaos implies that while long term forecasting is vain, reliable short-term forecasting would be possible. The objective of this research is to uncover the nonlinear dynamics and chaotic behavior of the liquid bulk cargo shipping, using monthly data from January 1992 to March 2013 for the Spanish seaports. For this purpose, in first instance we remove any linear dependence by means of the Box-Jenkins approach. Afterwards we analyzed the existence of nonlinearity and chaotic behavior by applying the BDS and the Lyapunov test respectively. Our findings suggest that although there has been found a dominant nonlinear structure underlying the dynamics of the liquid bulk traffic, determinism cannot be assumed and hence chaos cannot be inferred. These results are especially relevant for modeling and forecasting of maritime traffic, specifically for liquid bulk cargo, and for the design and evaluation of public policies related to the investment planning and management of port system.

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