Abstract: Eight typical ports in Shandong (e.g. Yantai, Qingdao, Weifang, Dongying, Rizhao) are studied in this paper. By fully considering the particularity of the development of Shandong Peninsula, Bohai Bay and the southern areas；in light of grand environment of port resource in Shandong Province; and the status quo of port development, thereof, this paper analyses the differences between regional ports and the necessity of forming port alliance. On this basis, the relevant panel data of Shandong regional ports from 2011 to 2017 are analyzed using vector auto-regression, the interaction between ports and economic development are analyzed, the influence of specific factors on regional port development through fixed effect regression model are further analyzed. The study finds that there is an interactive effect between regional ports and economic development, and the ports-to-economic contribution is stronger than economy-to-port contribution. Specifically, the regional economic level, industrial structure and infrastructure, and other heterogeneous economic factors have significant impacts on the development of Shandong regional ports.

Key words: Shandong regional ports, economic development, port alliance, interactive effect, vector auto-regression model