Can the Capitalist System Protect the Shipping Companies from Business Cycles or They Have to Apply an “Anti-Cyclical” Business Policy?

Abstract

We surveyed what was written on “business cycle”-BC by two famous economists: Keynes and Schumpeter; and what was written on: maritime cycle by two maritime/marine economists, less famous: Stopford and Goulielmos! Remarkably, all sources led us to one conclusion: “a BC is caused by demand and supply (of goods & services) intensified or not by local or global Wars and Canal closures!” The BC’s duration is definitely changeable. There was a clear tendency, however, for the BC shipping to become shorter, and to arrive sooner, as time went by. Also, the bad times are longer nowadays and the good times depart quickly, except for the so-called exceptional boom (2003-2008)! The capitalist system permits monopoly profits, and then it takes an unknown time to eliminate them! Ship-owners “enjoyed” the monopoly profits from 2003 to 2008, at a rather desperate previous time. Then, (2001-2), ship-owners were looking at their industry recording 24 business cycles till that time, since 1743, and 1-six yearly cycle, since 1981… Believing that monopoly profits appear once in 60 years in their industry, ship-owners waited for the next boom… which finally arrived (2003) 1 . This paper revealed that the monopoly profits of 2003-2008 were responsible for the longer depression by 5 years (2009-2018). In the capitalist system, consumption is the steady value, but investment, by resting on businessmen, depends on an agreement between investors’ expectations— about efficiency—and their realization of them ( Keynes )!