Shipping Business Unwrapped

Okan Duru is Assistant Professor of Maritime Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His major research interests are maritime economics, computational intelligence for shipping economics, economic pluralism, maritime policies, shipping investment and finance. He received his PhD, on the Long-term Econometric Analysis of Dry Bulk Shipping, at the Graduate School of Maritime Sciences, Kobe University. He has published in various journals and conferences proceedings, in addition to reviewing and editing papers.

'In Shipping Business Unwrapped, Dr Duru presents an original and personal interpretation of the practice of shipping business. This volume is not a comprehensive textbook which systematically defines and expounds the technical and theoretical mechanisms that underpin particular phenomena in the shipping industry. Rather, the author attempts to explore institutional and behavioural aspects of shipping business and the human side of shipping. For experienced practitioners, the selective account is refreshing and the critique offered of neo-classical rationality is highly provocative in debunking technical myths and jargon. Instead of offering a textbook of applied behavioural economics, Dr Duru challenges the highly conservative shipping industry with numerous practical suggestions based on high level concepts which could avoid traditional illusions and fallacies. Perhaps the future success of shipping business will depend on its ability to heed them.' — Professor John Dinwoodie, Head, Department of International Shipping, Logistics and Operations, Plymouth Business School, Plymouth University, UK

• Introduction 1. The Fundamentals of Shipping Economics: Perfections, Simplifications, and the Big Picture 2. The Story of Ton-Mile: Can We Really Measure Demand or Supply in the Shipping Business? 3. Ships vs. Assets: Fleet vs. Portfolio 4. Garbage In, Gospel Out: Fallacy and Freakonomics of Shipping Statistics 5. Information Asymmetry: What You Know and What You Do Not Know! 6. Emotions: Neuroeconomics of the Shipping Business 7. Alliance Capitalism: Solidarity Survives 8. Cycles: This Time, It’s Almost the Same! 9. The Anatomy of a Shipping Crisis: Dissection of Irrational Exuberance 10. The Shipping Mortgage Crisis: How Ship Valuation Methods Rationalized Toxic Shipping Portfolios and Ship Covered Bonds 11. Glaring Tycoons: Survivorship Bias 12. The Fallacy of ‘Expertise-like’: Know-Whys 13. Too Big to Fail: Winner's Tragedy 14. About the C-Level Executives: Get the Incentives Right 15. Spot vs. Period: Risk vs. Loyalty 16. Too Small to Survive: Uniqueness vs. Size 17. Seafarers and Outsourcing: Bundle It! 18. Dashboard: Visualizing Shipping Metrics 19. The Age of Artificial Intelligence: What Computational Intelligence Needs to be 20. Lenders’ Stimulus: Even Bankers Can be Misled 21. The Magic of the Discount Factor: Temporal Myopia and Hyperbolic Discounting 22. Credit Engineering: Misleading Habits 23. Risk vs. Uncertainty: Swine Flu and Shipping Concluding Remarks