A cross-country study of competitiveness of the shipping industry

For the last 50 years, international trade has been increased in both volume and speed, which has in turn brought about ever-increasing competition among major maritime nations and required a corresponding shipping policy. This study is to identify and weight the factors influencing a country’s shipping competitiveness and shipping policy. According to the results of questionnaires and Delphi method, 24 factors have been chosen from a practical perspective while weights of factors are determined by the application of analytic hierarchy process (AHP) from a theoretical perspective. Then, on the basis of factors and their weights, a shipping competitiveness index (SCI) is constructed to quantitatively measure and rank the main maritime countries. In addition, the results of cluster analysis, based on each country’s present and potential competitiveness, provide some implications and policy suggestion for each group of nations with similar background and development conditions.