• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.24 no.2 s.88
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• pp.53-63
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• 2006

The objective of this study is to estimate Korean transportation service index (KTSI), and to explore possible uses of the KTSI. The KTSI was monthly index to represent the level of passenger and freight services by road, railroad, air and maritime modes, which was developed from eight series. Four of these series measure the level of passenger services (passenger-kilometers) by road, railroad. air and maritime modes : monthly data from January 1995 to December 2004. Similarly. the remaining four series measure the level or freight activity (tonnage) by four modes during the same period. Given the weights of modal revenues, component series were aggregated into two indexes (passenger index and freight index) and a composite index using Chained Fisher Ideal index. which was a geometric mean of the Laspeyres index and the Passche index. The Fisher Ideal index is one of the 'superlative' indexes, which diminish 'substitution bias' as current-weighted indexes. As a result, the freight index and the composite index explain economic conditions better than the passenger index. Based on the composite index. the newly estimated KTSI shows an average lag time of one and a half years at peaks and three months at troughs in comparison with domestic business cycles. Nonetheless. the following efforts are needed for more credible and useful estimates; establishment of data collection scheme in time. credibility uplift of used data, development of various indexation methods.