Shipbuilder country and second-hand price

Abstract

The hypothesis that a shipbuilder's country influences the second-hand price of ships is tacitly accepted by most market analysts and practitioners. This article presents an econometric analysis to test this hypothesis. The analysis is based on econometric modelling of second-hand ship prices. The regressors include ship deadweight, ship age, indexes of earnings and newbuilding prices, LIBOR, and dummy variables that represent the build country or region. Models specific for tankers, bulk carriers and containerships were estimated. The analysis has generally shown that the effect of a ship's build country on the second-hand price may be statistically significant. Additionally, an assessment of the time evolution of this effect has been performed on bulk carriers built in Japan that were sold from 2003 to 2017. The results indicated some negative correlation between the market state and the price differentials associated with the build country.