Shipping's fourth wave: ship management and Vernon's trade cycles

Abstract

This paper considers the question whether the present recovery of shipping means a return to pre-crisis conditions with hegemony of OECD shipping or whether shipping has irrevocably changed. Shipping is losing its national character as ship management firms contribute towards the fragmenting of traditional ship-owning firms into separately managed activities, making shipping more footloose as an industry and facilitating relocation in least cost factor markets. Trade cycles may be at work in shipping like those observed in many industrial markets, beyond the scope of any single government's ability to control. The dispersion of shipping and shipping firms away from the historical concentration in a few traditional maritime powers towards low-cost countries must be seen as a manifestation of a secular trend, giving rise to a profound reorganization not only of shipping markets but of shipping itself.

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