2021

Lixian Fan, Shanghai University
Jiaqi Xie, Shanghai University

The shipping industry is one of the most capital-intensive industries in the world. As one of the most important business activities of shipping companies, the investment in new ships is highly-cost, particularly in container vessels. Ship choice is an important decision for shipping companies. Using a dataset compiled from Clarkson Research Services Limited, this study analyzes individual shipowners' ship choice decisions through multinomial logistic regression. The empirical estimation shows that larger shipping companies are more likely to buy larger container ships. Market-driven ship investment decision such as the cost of new-built ships has a negative impact on the choice of ship type. The shipping company will invest in larger vessels when the oil prices are high. The higher the freight, the easier it is for the shipping company to buy medium-sized vessels and the less likely to buy large vessels. When it comes to competitive strategy, the shipping companies will be more inclined to choose to buy larger ships as the market share of the competitors increases. Different factors have different impacts on shipping companies' ship choice behavior in contrasting market situations. Keywords: Container Ship, Ship Investment, Ship Type Choice, Multinomial Logistic Regression

Ayfer Ergin, Istanbul University, Cerrahpasa
Mohammad Feizollahi, Georgia State University
Can Kutlu, Istanbul Universitesi

With recent changes in world trade and maritime transport, there are also changes within container transportation in order to adapt the ocean container carrier (OCC) to increasingly competitive conditions and to meet the new, and crucial expectations of the customers. Shippers, consignees, and freight forwarders all have varied expectations from the services provided by OCCs. This study aims to determine which selection criteria are used while assigning OCCs and also identify which criteria are preferred under recent conditions by considering the perspective of shippers, consignees, freight forwarders. Another aim of this study is to contribute to the literature by the previously unused fuzzy TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution) method to examine OCCs selection. It has been observed that the selection criteria for OCCs have changed over time, and that customer relations related criteria are regarded as more important than freight criterion by shippers and consignees.

Jin Zeng, Beijing Jiaotong University
Fangrong Qi, Beijing Jiaotong University

The evaluation research of the railway freight rate can improve the marketing ability of the railway freight rate, and help the freight price management personnel to judge the trend of market price risk and make the correct decision of price adjustment direction. In terms of qualitative evaluation, 15 freight rate evaluation indexes are selected in this paper to establish the freight rate evaluation index system. Based on the improved grey relational grade analysis model, the freight rate's comprehensive state evaluation value is calculated. The improved grey relational analysis not only considers the relation between each index and freight rate, but also examines the relationship between each index, and the evaluation result is more comprehensive and objective. In terms of quantitative evaluation, based on the bi-level programming model, the freight rate's optimal price is calculated by taking the maximum freight profit of the railway transport enterprise as the upper target and the minimum freight cost of the owner of the cargo as the lower target. Finally, the S Railway Bureau's actual coal transportation in 2017 is taken as an example for analysis.

James Nolan, University of Saskatchewan
Benny Mantin, Universite du Luxembourg

Considering the importance of being able to develop policies to mitigate environmental externalities, the existence and degree of pass-through associated with externality taxation or pricing has been postulated to be strongly linked to the degree of market power possessed by the firm(s) being charged. In any case, the practical magnitude of this effect is poorly understood. This situation is no different in the critical maritime shipping industry, which now finds itself subject to controversial environmental taxation. To understand what might occur under this policy in this very concentrated industry, we develop a detailed economic experiment that emulates the relationship between a monopoly carrier and a set of shippers. The experimental framework produces stylized data to be tested for several relevant behavioral and industry hypotheses. Experimentation also allows us to assess the effects of parameter variation across key determinants of environmental pass-through relevant to maritime shipping. Such factors in this analysis include (but are not limited to) market demand, timing of tax implementation and relative levels of shipper costs. We find that in this high market power situation, some limited pass through of the imposed environmental tax occurs, but its magnitude is far less then predicted under the market circumstances. The latter may be a consequence of beliefs about individual fairness that sometimes occur in experimental situations.