The Routledge Handbook of Maritime Management

Abstract

This paper provides a critical review of the ship investment literature in the last 30 years following 43 journal articles and book chapters. The review is based on a framework that synthesizes and integrates the literature in terms of timing and viability of shipping investment, raising of funds and managing the investment. Based on this review, a number of promising directions for future research are laid out through the identification of the major contributions and the progress that has been made so far with regards to the broader thematic area of shipping investments, as well as through highlighting important knowledge gaps that could potentially serve as a research agenda for the future.

Identifying Key Financial, Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG), Bond, and COVID-19 Factors Affecting Global Shipping Companies—A Hybrid Multiple-Criteria Decision-Making Method

“…These findings are consistent with the extant literature that financial indicators are mostly scrutinized by equity and bond investors and that shipping companies need to respond to emergencies rapidly [19,21]. Although ESG has gained increasing importance in the literature, it is regarded as less crucial compared to financial performance and emergencies such as the COVID-19 [18,36,50]. The outcome of this study suggests that shipping companies with higher financial performance can better cope with the negative effects of COVID-19.…”

“…They discovered that some corporate governance mechanisms could reduce agency costs and improve financial performance. Similarly, Panayides [36] and Siminica et al [18] have demonstrated that corporate governance featuring independent directors and a diverse board can enhance the value of shipping companies. However, other researchers have argued that family ownership can cause conflicts of interest between family and nonfamily board members, thus diminishing corporate value [9,17].…”

“…Although an increasing number of investors favor shipping stocks, the high cyclicality and volatility of freight rates in response to the changing demand from world trade could lead to substantial investment loss [21,35]. Shipping companies are generally exposed to four categories of risks, namely financial risk (poor financial performance), default risk (failure to pay bond interest and principal), business risk (inability to comply with regulations), and market risk (reduction in a firm's value resulting from a distressed market, such as that during the COVID-19 pandemic) [22,[35][36][37].…”

How Long Do We Keep Up With the Joneses? Herding Time Horizons in the Dry Bulk Shipping Markets

“…Finally, Melas and Michail (2020a) show that the herding behavior observed in the shipping markets is affected primarily by market sentiment. More interestingly, herding behavior in the shipping context affects the buy side of the market, expressed via the newbuilding orders, and not the sell side.…”

The Coevolutionary Process of Maritime Management of Shipping Industry in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…However, few articles have examined maritime management in the shipping industry from the perspective of maritime proposals. Research on maritime management is extensive, and most of them conceptualize it as an event or a cause/consequence [10][11][12][13]. This line of research focuses on maritime accidents [14], Port State Control (PSC) inspections [4,15], and the marine environment [16].…”