So, the LCI is, a Liner for the Connectivity Index which is a country level, and since more recently also, the Bilateral Index as BCI, have been used in research on trade costs on positioning countries in global trade and other networks with very encouraging results. I'll just share one example with you which is based on a study from the World Bank. So, the World Bank developed their own indicator. Which could be another index. It's like an estimate of trade costs. So the World Bank developed a measurement of trade cost. And try to explain trade costs with a number of exogenous variables. And one of the variables included in the estimate of trade costs was, LSCI. Doesn't say so here literally, but, the long red line that says, Liner of the connectivity is actually the product of two countries LSCI. So, the multiples and multiplication of two countries' LSCI, not the sum but the product was included in this regression and have a stronger statistical explanatory impact on trade costs. Then other indicators that were included in there, like Air Connectivity Index, like Components of the Doing Business Index of the World Bank. And of course the red line here, the one on the left, is indicator of improvement mean, reducing trade costs that's why it's on the left. It's a negative sign that reduces trade costs, as compared to for example distance, the dark blue you see at the bottom. Of course if you have a longer distance between pairs of countries under the classical gravity models, then trade costs go up. So as you can see from this example of research, we can clearly see that, I think we're on the right track. Liner of shipping connectivity. A country's position in global shipping networks is a strong indicator of a number of things; trade costs, volume of trade, trade competitiveness. Looking a little bit at some of the next steps and what we want to do next. First of all, we will continue our work developing the index, updating the index, looking at the components. The first one is, CI, the Country level Index. Is just a country level, just easier to calculate and more straightforward in its interpretation. The BCI, the Bilaterally is more complex, also more interesting, and probably more useful for Gravity models, and trade models. We have to be careful, as a final note on this course on shipping connectivity. This type of index makes sense whenever we have regular services. We had earlier used the example of the London tube, the Paris Metro, or the TPV in Geneva. If you have a regular service, and you say my bus number three leaves at 7:32 in the morning, and I have a timetable, then I can do this type of analysis. I cannot do this type of analysis for a taxi service, because there's no schedule. And the taxi service, or a chartered bus service, it is the person who charters the bus or the taxi, who decides when and where it leaves and from and where it goes. So this concept is useful for regular services. Which is the case for container services, which moves most of the Manufactured goods of the world. More than 50 percent estimates, or 52 percent of global seaborne trade are containerized. It is for this trade that our indices are relevant and important. They are more difficult and we need to do something different if we want to look into the future, and look at bulk shipping, like oil transport, iron, or coal. For this, we are still working on it. So that is the last point on the outlook. Once you answer one question, you come up with a new question. So we have concluded our work on container shipping connectivity, liner shipping connectivity. And the next challenges we're looking at would be, to do something similar not on the country level, but maybe on the port level, and also looking into other types of services.
