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Container liner shipping companies started expanding their business by investing in container port terminals in the late 1990s. This market entry results in an extensive presence of vertically integrated liners and terminals. This study aims to explore the competition effects of this vertical integration trend based on a regional (European) analysis. In particular, it extracts lessons from the European Commission (EC) cases on the competition effects of vertical integration. The critical analysis of the cases examined at the institutional level intends to reach conclusions on whether liner–terminal vertical integration harmed or advanced competition in the relevant markets and/or the extent that there is a need to revise the current policy practices.

This study critically assesses the EC’s decisional practices in port container terminal vertical mergers in the last 25 years (1997–2021). Based on a literature review comparing maritime and competition economists' perspectives, it reviews the types of mergers examined, the methodology followed for relevant market definition and calculation of market shares and the estimated competition effects. The Hamburg–Le Havre area is the port range used as a case study for comparing the decisional practice with actual market developments. These container ports serve the greatest consuming market of final and intermediate goods in Europe and are gateways to Central and Eastern Europe.

The assessment identifies a need for expanding the investigation as a precondition for reaching conclusions on both the anti- and pro-competitive effects. First, only a limited number of transactions have been notified to the EC. Second, the empirical research identified a gap in this process, as there were no decisions (phase I) on vertical mergers between 2008 and 2016. Third, the exante assessment has not applied a phase II in-depth analysis to any case due to the absence of competition concerns. Finally, due to the absence of complaints, there is a lack of any ex post assessment of the effects of vertical integration.

This assessment is important for understanding the current and emerging features of intra-port and inter-port competition and the potential effects that the continuation and expansion of liner companies' vertical integration strategies will have along maritime supply chains. It also contributes to the broader discussion on liner companies' strategies, such as the research and policy-making efforts around the globe to understand the impact of both vertical and horizontal integration.

These discussions are critical for a diversity of businesses that use liner shipping services or provide facilities and services to container shipping lines or ports. They are important for the interests of customers and consumers as they could inform any needed re-visiting of competition policy to protect from the dominance of any market developments that would lead to conditions limiting competition. Expanding analysis on the competition effects of non-notified mergers would help a better understanding of market changes.

Enhancing competition and limiting monopolies is valuable from a consumer's perspective. This is more so in the case of maritime trade that serves the needs of societies. The study contributes by generating a better understanding of how decision-makers have worked towards that direction and what realignments are worthy.

There are no previous comprehensive reviews and analyses of the ways that policy-makers at the regional level have addressed the competition effects of vertical integration strategies of liner shipping companies when enhancing competition is valuable from a consumer perspective. Comparing maritime economists and competition, the study, via its literature review, also offers a comparison of maritime and competition perspectives on these competition effects, allowing positioning of how effective decisional-making practices have been.

This paper examines the possible cooperation options in terms of empty container repositioning across alliances for shipping lines based in the Greater China Region (China, Taiwan and Hong Kong SAR), after the three global shipping alliances reformed in April 2017.

This paper offers a comprehensive review to the latest shipping alliances and introduces a new cooperative dimension among shipping lines based in the Greater China Region which are member of different shipping alliances.

Cooperation among shipping lines in the Greater China Region in terms of empty container handling is possible in terms of resource sharing among shipping lines across alliances that fosters mega shipping line formation in the future.

Shipping lines should review their current empty container repositioning strategies and explore cooperation among non-alliance members having headquarters in proximity for quick responsiveness in empty container repositioning plan and execution.

This is a research directly analyzing the empty repositioning plan of the major shipping lines and their major service routes, fleet and containers.

The first well-known liner shipping conference was created for the UK/Calcutta trade in 1875. However, the European Union (EU) decided to abolish repeal the liner conferences system with effect from October 18 2008. This paper aims to study the governing regulations on shipping conferences in Taiwan along with investigating the impact on the EU to repeal conferences. The regulation on liner conferences in the USA is also briefly referred.

Literature review and questionnaire survey are used to conduct the study. This paper reviews important literature relating to the EU to repeal the conferences system and its impact on liner market competition to/from European trade routes, with discussions on the US and Taiwan regulations on shipping conferences. Questionnaire survey data, collected from published report and this research present shippers’ and carriers’ responses on the changes of regulations on liner conferences.

Shippers are strongly supporting the repeal of the conferences system. Academic research results basically reveal that the liner market will be more competitive in the trades to/from the USA and the EU after the repeal of the conferences. For Taiwan, its regulations are rather simple and loosely control over the liner conferences; therefore, if the shipping administration intends to enhance the inspection of the agreements of conferences and strategic alliances, more detailed regulations should be prepared, and the provisions of the EU or USA would be a good reference.

Through the discussions on the legal treatments of shipping conferences from the USA, the EU and Taiwan perspectives, this paper provides shipping researchers with not only a clear evolution of the liner conferences but also a deep understanding of the impact to repeal the conferences on liner market competition.

This paper reviews important literature and related legislations on liner conferences including the USA, the EU and Taiwan. The different responses on the EU to repeal the conferences system from shippers and carriers are discussed. The impact on liner market competition is presented.

Emissions produced by oceangoing vessels not only negatively affect the environment but also may deteriorate health of living organisms. Several regulations were released by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to alleviate negative externalities from maritime transportation. Certain polluted areas were designated as “Emission Control Areas” (ECAs). However, IMO did not enforce any restrictions on the actual quantity of emissions that could be produced within ECAs. This paper aims to perform a comprehensive assessment of advantages and disadvantages from introducing restrictions on the emissions produced within ECAs. Two mixed-integer non-linear mathematical programs are presented to model the existing IMO regulations and an alternative policy, which along with the established IMO requirements also enforces restrictions on the quantity of emissions produced within ECAs. A set of linearization techniques are applied to linearize both models, which are further solved using the dynamic secant approximation procedure. Numerical experiments demonstrate that introduction of emission restrictions within ECAs can significantly reduce pollution levels but may incur increasing route service cost for the liner shipping company.

Two mixed-integer non-linear mathematical programs are presented to model the existing IMO regulations and an alternative policy, which along with the established IMO requirements also enforces restrictions on the quantity of emissions produced within ECAs. A set of linearization techniques are applied to linearize both models, which are further solved using the dynamic secant approximation procedure.

Numerical experiments were conducted for the French Asia Line 3 route, served by CMA CGM liner shipping company and passing through ECAs with sulfur oxide control. It was found that introduction of emission restrictions reduced the quantity of sulfur dioxide emissions produced by 40.4 per cent. In the meantime, emission restrictions required the liner shipping company to decrease the vessel sailing speed not only at voyage legs within ECAs but also at the adjacent voyage legs, which increased the total vessel turnaround time and in turn increased the total route service cost by 7.8 per cent.

This study does not capture uncertainty in liner shipping operations.

The developed mathematical model can serve as an efficient practical tool for liner shipping companies in developing green vessel schedules, enhancing energy efficiency and improving environmental sustainability.

Researchers and practitioners seek for new mathematical models and environmental policies that may alleviate pollution from oceangoing vessels and improve energy efficiency. This study proposes two novel mathematical models for the green vessel scheduling problem in a liner shipping route with ECAs. The first model is based on the existing IMO regulations, whereas the second one along with the established IMO requirements enforces emission restrictions within ECAs. Extensive numerical experiments are performed to assess advantages and disadvantages from introducing emission restrictions within ECAs.

Liner shipping plays a crucial role in facilitating the movement of manufactured goods around the world. While previous literature has shown that liner shipping is an important trade driver, potential differences across trade routes and world regions have not as yet been explored. This paper examines whether the impact of liner shipping on bilateral trade flows differs significantly across world regions, as well as exploring other geographical patterns.

Using state-of-the-art gravity modelling, this paper investigates the impact of the UNCTAD's Liner Shipping Bilateral Connectivity Index on bilateral trade in manufactured goods using a comprehensive database of disaggregated trade data for the period from 2006 to 2019.

The results show that the trade effect of liner shipping is greater in long-distance and interregional bilateral flows. For some regions, such as North America and Oceania, the effect is greater than the world average, while for others, such as Africa and South America, the effect is significantly smaller. The trade effects of liner shipping connectivity on the main east–west routes are average, but clear asymmetry emerges when analysing China's inward and outward trade flows separately.

The results of this paper show that the major east–west routes determine the baseline trade effects of liner shipping, demonstrate that some north–south trades such as those involving Oceania generate larger trade effects and confirm that the trade effects of liner shipping can be improved for some world regions such as South America and Africa.

Antitrust exemptions to shipping alliances in the liner shipping sector have prevailed for many years. This study aims to examine anti-competition of ocean shipping alliances from a legal perspective of the USA, the European Union (EU) and People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Adopting the standard “doctrinal approach to legal research and analysis” in legal literatures, this paper reviews landmark court cases and legislations in the USA relating to shipping conference system from its beginning to its erosion, followed by its latest transition to non-ratemaking agreements, with discussions on the EU and some PRC treatments on shipping conferences.

Although antitrust exemptions to shipping conferences in the liner shipping sector were eliminated in the trades to/from the USA and the EU, there is a lack of evidence of the deterioration found in the viability of liner shipping carriers in both parts of the world trades. For the USA, shipping alliances will shift the focus to sharing resources for improvement of collective operational efficiencies, whereas the shipper groups in the EU have worried that a protected system of sharing information may lead to price fixing conducts among the carriers.

Through the discussions on the legal treatments of shipping conferences from the USA, the EU and PRC perspectives, this paper provides legal researchers with not only a new research direction on raising collective operational efficiencies through resource sharing but also an insight into shifting their research focus from purely price determination to the area of merger.

This paper reviews landmark court cases and related legislations about the treatments of different regulatory regimes, including the USA, the EU and PRC, to explore the illegitimacy of anti-competition conducts in ocean shipping alliances.

This paper aims to address the following questions: is good liner shipping connectivity a requisite for merchandise imports plus exports? What is the average of merchandise imports plus exports of the countries neighboring China? Do the merchandise imports plus exports of these countries correspond to each country’s own merchandise imports plus exports or liner shipping connectivity index (LSCI)?

The authors spatially analyze liner shipping connectivity and merchandise imports plus exports using 2016 data and a common framework for linear regression to establish the relationship amongst a country’s LSCI and its merchandise imports plus exports and between its merchandise imports plus exports and those of its neighbors. Merchandise imports plus exports of countries are not necessarily independent of each other, and countries that are contiguous may produce similar observations.

North America and Western Europe comprised clusters of countries that participated more actively in the international trading system, while Africa’s countries had less international trade than average. The study identifies and quantifies the geographical ripple of transport infrastructure on merchandise trade from a national perspective. Notably, a spatially lagged term improved the model’s ability to account for variations in merchandise imports plus exports across countries.

The spatial lag of merchandise imports plus exports can contribute to specifying the spread of merchandise imports plus exports beyond what the authors would anticipate from a country’s network of liner shipping.

This study aims to develop a competitive dynamics model of container shipping liners, one which examines how inter-firm network embeddedness would affect inter-firm rivalry such as the likelihood of a competitive action of a focal firm and the likelihood of its rivals’ response and how the inter-firm rivalry then has an influence on the market share of the focal firm. Structural and relational network embeddedness between a focal firm and its competitors would be investigated as drivers of the likelihood of the competitive action and response. The theoretical framework on the relationship between network embeddedness, inter-firm rivalry and market share in the liner shipping industry will be developed and relevant propositions are then suggested in relation to the model. This attempt may provide meaningful insights for managers and academic researchers into the key factors which affect the inter-firm rivalry between shipping liners and may also detail the impact of inter-firm rivalry on the focal firm’s market share. This research would therefore contribute to the development of the competitive strategy of container shipping companies so as to help them strategically manage their rivals’ competitive behaviors and maximize their market share.

Liner connectivity plays an important role as a determinant in how a country is able to gain access to world markets. Liner shipping as the medium of seaborne transport for import and export of manufactured and semi-manufactured goods plays a significant part in international trade, which in turn potentially contribute towards the prosperity of a country and its surrounding region. Liner Shipping Connectivity Index (LSCI) is one of the most common benchmark to see how well connected a country in global trade, where it consists of five components, namely the number of ships, carrying capacity, ship size, services provided, and the number of companies that deploy container ships calling a country’s ports. This paper aims to tally from the most to the least which LSCI component contributes in improving the shipping connectivity with the most impact, in six Maritime South-East Asian countries, i.e., Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. By descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and panel data, this paper finds that the country port’s capacity to accept larger ship size provides the most significant impact towards the improvement of the connectivity in the region. To attract companies to deploy largest ship, the improvement needs to be complemented with the capacity that can meet the expected volume, offering a variety of service, and good turnaround speed at the country’s port. The paper is expected to present not only indicative recommendations on which logistics connectivity initiative needs to be invested first, but also necessary proposals to develop a programme for building the region’s overall logistics industry.

Paper Code: SLC-206

This study explores the main factors considered when shippers and container shipping lines select their import/export and transshipment ports. In the present study, 38 container port selection indices were chosen from the previous research and field interviews. The scores of the 38 items were collected via survey to the three major maritime/port market players: shippers, shipping lines, and container terminal operators. In order to analyze the different priorities imposed on the port selection factors by the three market players, the ANOVA method has been employed. The empirical test shows the different perceptions about port selection attributes among service suppliers and demanders. In addition, the 38 items have been categorized into seven key factors through an exploratory factor analysis. The ANOVA technique was employed again to analyze the perspective differences for the port selection factors among the market players. The results show that there are significant differences among the players assessing the importance of the three port choice factors: liners and terminal operators give more weight to ‘hinterland and terminal basic conditions’ than shippers; terminal operators do not take ‘line operation’ as seriously as carriers and shippers; the factor of ‘terminal operation’ is more significantly considered by liners and terminal operators than by shippers.