• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.351-358
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• 2022

This study analyzed changes in the market concentration of Korean ocean-going shipping companies using shipping revenue based CR (Concentration Ratio), and HHI (Herfindahl - Hirschman Index) to examine the effects of the government's selection and concentration based the shipping reconstruction scheme. The results of this study showed that the market structure of the Korean shipping industry has changed from a competitive market to a rather concentrated market, as CR as well as HHI values have increased from 2019 to 2021. In particular, the market share of the deep-sea shipping lines has risen significantly compared to the intra-Asian short-sea shipping lines and the tramp carriers, implying that the Korean liner shipping market has become a monopoly, or highly concentrated oligopoly market. Compared to other shipping markets, the high rise in ocean freight rates (i.e. Asia-Europe America) was the leading cause of the increase in the revenues of the ocean-going shipping lines, and the increased fleet through preemptive government support has enabled them to achieve more revenues. As a result, it can be interpreted that the government's fleet expansion strategy has been more effective than expected, but it is too early to conclude if the market structure of the Korean ocean-going shipping companies has been strengthened.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.121-140
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• 2021

The ship recycling or scrap is a phenomenon in the process of vessels life cycle has ended in the shipping industry. Scrap are greatly affected by freight rates due to ship demands. Not only that, environmental regulation and economic scale vessel demand are processes that must exist in the shipping industry as they obtain management for existing vessels. In the past, shipbreaking yard had tried to work without protection for poverty, without poor working conditions and facilities to prevent the emission of harmful substances. However, the issue of environmental pollution has been raised the Basel and Hong Kong Convention have been adopted, and a new replacement of the ship scrap that induces serious pollution is required. In this study, 165 countries were analyzed to confirm the importance of determining the ship solution. As a result of the analysis, it was found that the Environmental Performance Index, which is a measure of environmental regulation, is the most influential factor of ship scrapped volume. The determinant of whether lower labor cost can be secured is more correlated with population than GDP per capita. The implications of the results of the regression analysis mean that if environmental regulations for ship scrap of the future are strengthened, the status of Bangladesh and Pakistan, which currently account for half of the world's ship recycling, may change.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.107-120
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• 2019

Crude oil is a resource that is being used as a raw material in major industries, representing the price of the raw material market. It is also an important element that affects the shipping market in terms of fuel costs for freight vessels. As a result, crude oil and freight rates are closely related. Therefore, from January 2009 to June 2019, this study analyzed the dependency structure between oil price (WTI) and freight rates (BDI, BCI, BPI, BSI, and BHI) using daily data. The main results are summarized as follows. First, according to the copula results, survival Gumbel copula in WTI-BDI, Clayton copula in WTI-BCI, Survival Joe copula in WTI-BPI, Joe copula in WTI-BSI, and survival Gumbel copula in WTI-BHI were selected as the best-fitted model. Second, looking at Kendall's tau correlation, there is a positive correlation between BDI and oil price. Furthermore, freight rate index (BCI, BPI, BSI) and oil price show positive dependencies. In particular, the strongest dependence was found in BCI and oil price returns. However, BHI and oil price show a negative dependency. Third, looking at the tail-dependency structure, a pair between oil price and BDI, BCI showed a lower tail-dependency. The pair between oil price and BSI showed the upper tail-dependency.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.1-15
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• 2015

During global recessions, such as the 2008 financial crisis, Korean shipping companies have been undergoing a liquidity crisis that is comparably worse than other shipping companies worldwide. One of the reasons behind this repetitive vicious cycle can be the lack of ability to foresee the future by analyzing and understanding the volatile shipping market. Traditionally, in order to assimilate the shipping market, larger Korean shipping companies have been purchasing market reports published by Europe-based research companies and shipping brokers, leading to a digital divide by company size. To resolve this issue, the Maritime Exchange Information Center (MEIC) has been publishing shipping market reports that include essential shipping information such as freight rates by different routes; commodity trends for iron ore, grain, and coal; ship-building trends for new-building, second-hand, and demolition markets; as well as bunker price and port congestion. This research was conducted to analyze the effectiveness of four variables-information usefulness, market reflection, information composition, and latest information-on information satisfaction. If the information satisfaction was found to be adequate, the analysis of actual proof was used to determine if the customers would be willing to purchase MEIC's report when it is chargeable. All the four variables were found to have positive effects on information satisfaction. In particular, latest information was found to directly affect the intention to purchase. Furthermore, high information satisfaction was related to the intention to purchase.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Navigation
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.17-48
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• 1984

The economy of ship's size and speed is affected by the freight rates, sailing distances, cargo handling rates, fuel oil prices and even interest rates of the borrowed funds. It can be a step more powerful measures if the economic evaluation model takes in a cargo lot size which prevails in the shipping markets. This paper has dealt with hypothetical cargo lots which happen to the market with uniform distribution in probability. The evaluation models are either profit maximization method or cost minimization method. The former compares among different voyages in profitability to the invested funds, the later defines the transportation efficiency in ton-mile unit and be used in comparing two or more transportation means. This paper adopted both of above methods to derive out ships economical evaluation contours for the various ship's speed and deadweight for certain cargo lot sizes, which can be used as important managerial decision data in purchasing ships or selecting a most profitable one among the proposed voyages. This evaluation contours will also be efficiently used in appraising so called "handy size ships" in connection with port water depth and conditions of voyage tracks.ge tracks.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.33 no.7
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• pp.469-476
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• 2009

Recent collapse of shipping market right after unprecedent surge clearly demonstrates that shipping industry is extremely risky. Due to the volatile movements of the freight rates, investors tend to ask higher rate of return; higher required return reduces the total net present value of the investment project. For several decades, the Discounted Cash Flow(DCF hereafter) analysis has been the most frequently used valuation technique. However, the main problem of the DCF analysis is its assumption that the discount rate would stay the same during the project life. In other words, it usually does not address the decisions that managers have after a project has been accepted. The purpose of this study is investigate a new valuation method of investment: the Real Option Analysis(ROA hereafter) on ship investment. By replacing the existing valuation methods with the new one, the research will present a new perspective on investment with uncertainty. While uncertainty increases risk of investment and consequently discounts the value of it in the traditional feasibility analysis, in the ROA, a new valuation method which will be addressed in the research, uncertainty means some additional value of flexibility so that the tool can help investors produce more accurate decisions. Contrary to the DCF analysis, the ROA takes managerial flexibilities into account. In reality, capital budgeting and project management is typically dynamic, rather than static in nature. The ROA finds and assesses the values of managerial flexibilities or real options in the investments. The main structures of the research will be as follows: (1) overview of the ship investment project, (2) evaluation of the project by the Net Present Value analysis, (3) evaluation of the same project by the Real Option Analysis, (4) comparision of the two techniques.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.129-141
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• 2023

This study analyzes the dynamic characteristics of daily freight rates of dry bulk and tanker shipping markets and their forecasting accuracy by using the error correction models. In order to calculate the error terms from the co-integrated time series, this study uses the common stochastic trend model (CSTM model) and vector error correction model (VECM model). First, the error correction model using the error term from the CSTM model yields more appropriate results of adjustment speed coefficient than one using the error term from the VECM model. Furthermore, according to the adjusted determination coefficients (adjR²), the error correction model of CSTM-model error term shows more model fitness than that of VECM-model error term. Second, according to the criteria of mean absolute error (MAE) and mean absolute scaled error (MASE) which measure the forecasting accuracy, the results show that the error correction model with CSTM-model error term produces more accurate forecasts than that of VECM-model error term in the 12 cases among the total 15 cases. This study proposes the analysis and forecast tasks 1) using both of the CSTM-model and VECM-model error terms at the same time and 2) incorporating additional data of commodity and energy markets, and 3) differentiating the adjustment speed coefficients based the sign of the error term as the future research topics.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.43-65
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• 2023

Recently, with the increasing international interest on environmental issues, efforts have been made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions due to ship fuel, however, the dependence on fossil fuel is expected to continue for a while. Since fuel costs account for a high portion of the total operating cost of a ship, it is necessary to analyze the influence of oil prices on the shipping markets. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the relationship between the international oil prices and the four major shipping markets for bulk carriers. This study employed WTI as the oil price variable while monthly data from 2017 to 2020 from the four major shipping markets by classifying freight rates, charter rates, newbuilding prices, and secondhand prices were also considered in multiple ship sizes of capesize, panamax, supramax, and handysize. Firstly, the results of the correlation analysis using the VAR model indicate that changes in international oil prices have a statistically positive (+) significant effect on BCIS only in the second time lag, on BSIS at all lags, and on BHIS only in the first staggered period. Secondly, as a result of correlation analysis using the VECM model, in the case of BPIC, BHIC, BCIN, and BHIR, the cointegration coefficient value has a negative (-) significant effect at the 5% significance level in the cointegration relationship with international oil prices. Further, in the case of the dynamic correlation, the increase in oil price in the first period of the lag leads to a decrease in the BCIN newbuilding prices while the increase in the oil price in the first and second period in the lag leads to a decrease in the BHIR used ship prices.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.17-36
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• 2021

Purpose - This study provides useful information to stakeholders by forecasting the tramp shipping market, which is a completely competitive market and has a huge fluctuation in freight rates due to low barriers to entry. Moreover, this study provides the most effective parameters for Baltic Dry Index (BDI) prediction and an optimal model by analyzing and comparing deep learning models such as the artificial neural network (ANN), recurrent neural network (RNN), and long short-term memory (LSTM). Design/methodology - This study uses various data models based on big data. The deep learning models considered are specialized for time series models. This study includes three perspectives to verify useful models in time series data by comparing prediction accuracy according to the selection of external variables and comparison between models. Findings - The BDI research reflecting the latest trends since 2015, using weekly data from 1995 to 2019 (25 years), is employed in this study. Additionally, we tried finding the best combination of BDI forecasts through the input of external factors such as supply, demand, raw materials, and economic aspects. Moreover, the combination of various unpredictable external variables and the fundamentals of supply and demand have sought to increase BDI prediction accuracy. Originality/value - Unlike previous studies, BDI forecasts reflect the latest stabilizing trends since 2015. Additionally, we look at the variation of the model's predictive accuracy according to the input of statistically validated variables. Moreover, we want to find the optimal model that minimizes the error value according to the parameter adjustment in the ANN model. Thus, this study helps future shipping stakeholders make decisions through BDI forecasts.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.183-200
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• 2018

This study empirically tests the presence of rational bubbles in the ship prices using time series data from October 1996 to April 2017. To detect the existence of ship prices' rational bubbles, we use integration and cointegration tests, which were proposed by Campbell and Shiller(1987) and Diba and Grossman(1988), for circumventing misspecification of ship price model and applying the bubble test to nonstationary time series. The result of integration test supports existence of tanker price's rational bubble. The co-integration test also shows that drybulk ship and containership prices have been overvalued relative to the market fundamental, drybulk and container freight rates, due to non-stationary rational bubbles. These results provide Korean shipping industry and authorities implications that anticyclical ship investment and long-term and steady fleet capacity expansion policy are needed.