Decadal changes in national shipping competitiveness and implications

This study examines how national shipping can be affected by various factors such as external trade, ship registration, shipbuilding capacity, shipping history, shipping policy, overall level of economic and technological development, oil exports and the development of the financial system. The study also covers both the national fleet and beneficial fleet as the two main dimension of national shipping using cross sectional data pertinent to two time frames, 2005 and 2014. The analysis results show that international trade, ship registration, shipbuilding capacity, oil export, shipping history, financial sector development and shipping policy continue to play a significant role in explaining the variations in tonnage owned by shipping nations, while the effects of other factors have different level of significance. Moreover, the effects of many variables on national shipping have also changed over the last decade. The overall level of economic development represented by income per capita no longer has a significant effect on national shipping, and neither does the coastline length variable. The effect of shipping policy and financial system development on national shipping has been less significant. The analysis results imply that policies aimed to promote the competiveness of national shipping need to capitalise on the country’s competitiveness by targeting the right factors at the right time.