The book is organized in four parts. Chapters 1–4 present an overview of the shipping business. The shipping business is essential to the development of economic activities as international trade needs ships to transport cargoes from places of production to places of consumption. Chapter 1 discusses several basic questions in the shipping business and these include the following: Why is there demand for shipping? What is a shipping system? Who are the actors in shipping? Chapter 2 examines the freight rate mechanism in the shipping market and introduces the concept of the “shipping cycle”. There are four separate but interrelated markets in the shipping industry, namely, the freight market, which trades sea transport, the second-hand market, which trades used ships, the new building market, which trades new ships, and the demolition market, which deals with scrap ships. These four shipping markets are closely interrelated. Chapter 3 provides managerial insights into the four shipping markets and explains how these shipping markets are related to each other. In analysing the container shipping industry, it is desirable to understand the factors influencing the capacity of the bulk shipping industry, explain how these factors affect the container shipping market grounded on a sound theoretical framework, and find empirical evidence to examine these relationships. Chapter 4 reports a study in the container shipping industry based on the industrial organization paradigm that “industry structure determines the conduct of firms whose joint conduct then determines the collective performance of the firms in the marketplace”.
