Liner Shipping Economics

by Jan Jansson

Overview

The importance of international liner shipping needs little emphasizing. A large majority of international trade moves by sea, and the liner shipping share in total freight revenue exceeds one-half. Notwithstanding, people in general know surprisingly little about the basic facts of the liner shipping industry, and, in particular, about the economics ofliner shipping. Perhaps because it is an international industry, where shipping lines flying many different flags participate, it has tended to fall in between national accounts of domestic industries. Even transport economists have, generally speaking, treated liner shipping rather 'stepmotherly'; besides the work of Bennathan and Walters (1969), a relatively small group of specialized maritime economists, including A. Stromme-Svendsen, T. Thorburn, S. Sturmey, R. Goss, and B. M. Deakin, have in the post-war period made important contributions to the subject, but so far no coherent and reasonably comprehensive treatise of liner shipping economics has appeared. The first purpose of the present volume is therefore obvious: to provide just that. The book is divided in three parts: Part I The liner shipping industry; Part II Liner service optimization; Part III Economic evaluation of the conference system. Needless to say, all three parts concur to fulfill the first purpose of providing a complete book of liner shipping economics. In Part II a more or less separate, second, purpose has been to develop analytical tools for liner service optimization. Thereby we use different approaches.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789401079143
Publisher:	Springer Netherlands
Publication date:	10/12/2011
Edition description:	Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1987
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.03(d)

Table of Contents

I The Liner Shipping Industry.- 1 Characteristics of demand and supply of liner shipping.- 2 Market organization: the conference system.- 3 The level and structure of freight rates.- 4 The art of charging what the traffic can bear.- II Liner Service Optimization.- 5 Ship size and shipping costs.- 6 Multi-port calling versus trans-shipment.- 7 Shippers’ costs of sailings infrequency and transit time.- 8 Port costs and charges and the problem of shipping and port sub-optimizations.- 9 A cost minimization model of a liner trade.- III Economic Evaluation of the Conference System.- 10 The charging floor reconsidered.- 11 The freight rate structure is out of line with the marginal cost structure.- 12 Potential cartel profits become social costs.- 13 Conclusion: price competition in liner shipping should be encouraged.- References.- Author index.