During the late 1990s and the early 2000s, this author conducted a comparative study on regime building in the world’s three maritime ‘mega regions’, i.e., the Atlantic, the (Asia-) Pacific and the Indian Ocean. The aim was to explain why regime building is so difficult in the latter as compared to the former two, and why newly formed regimes tend to end up as ‘sandbanks of shattered ho…
Purpose – The aim of this study is to determine the nature and extent of the threat of global maritime piracy. The cost of global piracy has been estimated at USD15-25 billion, reaching an all-time high in 2011, remaining an ongoing threat to world trade and contributing to high commodity costs. Design/methodology/approach – Based on a literature review of formal and informal published sour…
Piracy in international waters is on the rise again, in particular off the coast of Somalia. While the dynamic game between pirates, ship-owners, insurance firms and the military seems to have reached some kind of equilibrium, piracy risks generating significant negative externalities to third parties (e.g. in terms of environmental hazards and terrorism), justifying attempts to contain it. …
This paper investigates the impacts of maritime piracy on global economic development. Calibrated with data between 2003 and 2008, we model shipping demands and competition in the Far East-Europe container liner shipping service and investigate the economic welfare loss effects due to reduced volumes of trade and shipping, as well as efficiency loss due to geographical re-routing of shipping ne…
In this article, I explain maritime piracy syndicates’ structure and behavior as based on two required inputs: the time needed between an attack and the realization of profit, and access to certain economic and security goods, namely a secure environment and market infrastructure. Pirates face two challenges. Internally, they must keep the organization together during the operation, a ch…
This paper studies the contributing factors of maritime piracy by analyzing previous incidents that have been reported to the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Part of the analysis is to filter those ship types that are particularly vulnerable to piracy attacks. The paper also introduces the guidelines developed by the IMO and the industry envisaging to minimize the risk to ships that …