The state-of-play in maritime economics and logistics research (2017–2023)

Abstract

hundreds of shorter articles on my Linkedin profile and Blog. 1 The Editorial is written with an additional objective in mind: Rather than placing the emphasis on the technical prowess of our work, my narrative exposes the ramifications of the research, the reasons it was carried out, the issues at stake and, finally, the doors we have opened to future research on Maritime Economics and Logistics.The maritime academia is often criticized for its descriptive research, and this is rather unfortunate.I refer here to the type of research consisting of percentages, graphs, tables, and the like.Usually, such research stays on the surface of things, containing little analytical depth.I have also done quite a lot of this myself over the years.Depending on the 'audience' -often practical and busy businesspeople-, descriptive research does have a certain value and, at times, it is even expected.However, such output is rarely appreciated in university environments, or respectable scientific reviews (journals) and quite rightly so, particularly when it comes to the academic advancement of junior staff.Below, I have stayed away from this type of output (with one or two exceptions), discussing only our more rigorous type of research, published in top peer-review journals.The word 'rigorous' may deserve some more qualification in an editorial such as this.We, economists, like many other professionals, are 'builders' and 'tailors'.To build our houses, to sew our suits, we need tools and, for us, such tools, 'trade tools' if you like, are economic analysis, mathematical economics, statistics, econometrics, and operations research.This is the type of research that follows, again in an attempt to give our readers tips, advice, and leads that may or may not help them, or interest them, in doing the things that they would like to do going forward. The birth of Maritime Economics & Logistics (MEL)Twenty-five years ago, in a MEL editorial, 2 I coined the term maritime economics and logistics (MEL) as a distinct and well-defined branch of both applied economics and international business, now researched and taught in hundreds of universities around the world.The concept was simple.In those days, the treatment of the maritime sector was fragmented.Colleagues were talking and writing about ships, others about ports, or distribution, without, however, a full understanding of the importance of the door-to-door global supply chain, facilitated, one might add, by the container revolution.The business world of transport and distribution was however integrating: Carriers were investing in door-to-door logistics, rather than ships, and logistics companies were 'buying' shipping capacity from carriers to also expand in global logistics and become Non-Vessel-Owning-Common-Carriers (NVOCC) (Fig. 1).As a consequence, our 'maritime' discipline had to change too.Simply, it was no longer possible to talk about shipping without a good understanding of port and distribution operations and economics, and vice versa.Thus, MEL was born as an academic concept consisting of three tightly knit areas: i) ocean transportation (shipping); ii) ports and terminals; and iii) global logistics.Thus, the 'MEL Approach' 1