COLLABORATION ENHANCES UTILIZATION OF PRODUCTION FACTORS IN CONTAINER SHIPPING INDUSTRY

Abstract

This study investigates both theoretically and empirically the economic impact of collaborative operation between container carriers. Using the property of superadditivity of the Leontief production function, this study aims to demonstrate that the utilization rate of production factors will improve when liner carriers collaboratively provide services through a strategic alliance. Two production factors, containership slot utilization (CSU) and container circulation velocity (CCV), are used to empirically prove the existence of the efficiency improvement effect after 2000 (since 2000, strategic alliances have become a formal collaborative mechanism and have been restructured continuously).