Research On The Influencing Factors Analysis And Forecast On The Yangtze River Containerized Freight Index

The Yangtze River Shipping has developed rapidly since its inception in the 1970 s.As a "barometer" for shipping in the Yangtze River Basin,the Yangtze River Container Freight Index can reflect the market conditions of the Yangtze River container market to a certain extent.Relevant shipping companies and transportation decision-makers can grasp the changes in the Yangtze River container transportation market based on changes in freight index,in order to quickly adjust routes and capacity allocation and reduce logistics costs;government departments can also conduct macro-control based on fluctuations in the Yangtze River shipping market to promote the construction of golden waterways in the Yangtze River Economic Zone.This paper selects crude oil prices and manufacturing purchasing manager’s index as candidate influencing variables through theoretical analysis,and deeply studies the causal relationship between the two factors and the Yangtze River Container Freight Index.Through the Granger causality test among the Yangtze River Container Freight Index,WTI Crude Oil Price,Brent Crude Oil Price,China Official Manufacturing Purchasing Manager’s Index,and Caixin Manufacturing Purchasing Manager’s Index,it is found that WTI crude oil prices and official manufacturing purchasing Manager’s Index has a stronger ability to explain the Yangtze River Container Freight Index,so it is selected as an exogenous variable of the Yangtze River Container Freight Index prediction model.This article further models and analyzes the internal influence relationship of the freight index of each section of the Yangtze River container.The segment indexes of the upper,middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River container are selected as the influencing variables,and then Granger test,impulse response and variance decomposition are used to quantitatively calculate the causal relationship between the three segments.It is found that the relationship between the segment indexes is close.And in general,the freight index presents the order of influence from upstream to midstream and then downstream.This paper then conducts short-term forecasting research on the Yangtze River Container Freight Index,and compares and analyzes the forecast errors of the Yangtze River Container Index by establishing the ARIMA model,the ARIMAX model and the VAR model.It is found that the ARIMAX model with WTI crude oil price has better prediction accuracy.Finally,this article combines the empirical results and the practical problems of container transportation in the Yangtze River,and points out suggestions on the function positioning and development model of the upper,middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.