Unified Container Shipping Industry Data From 1966: Freight Rate, Shipping Quantity, Newbuilding, Secondhand, and Scrap Price

TL;DR

This paper creates a comprehensive historical dataset on container shipping industry prices and quantities from 1966 to 2009, enabling analysis of industry dynamics and structural breaks related to cartel collapse.

Contribution

It introduces a new unified panel dataset combining freight rates, shipping quantities, and asset prices over four decades, with validation and analysis of industry crises.

Findings

Identification of structural breaks in industry variables

Insights into the impact of cartel collapse on shipping prices and quantities

Detailed data merging methodology for industry analysis

Abstract

We construct a new unified panel dataset that combines route-year-level freight rates with shipping quantities for the six major routes and industry-year-level newbuilding, secondhand, and scrap prices from 1966 (the beginning of the industry) to 2009. We offer detailed instructions on how to merge various datasets and validate the data's consistency by industry experts and former executives who have historical knowledge and experience. Using this dataset, we provide a quantitative and descriptive analysis of the industry dynamics known as the container crisis. Finally, we identify structural breaks for each variable to demonstrate the impact of the shipping cartels' collapse.