Shipping markets - Essay Example

pparently, data indicates growing trade, which is indicative of increasing demand for all types of products in markets other than their places of production. Using regression analysis, I obtained the following output. From the results, time is a significant predictor of seaborne trade across the globe (β = 152.75, p < 0.001). This can be interpreted to imply that as time moves further away from the base year (1970), there has been significant increase in seaborne trade. It cannot, however, be interpreted to mean that time is a causative agent for increase in seaborne trade.

However, it is the developmental aspects of trade, technology, global interaction, and increased production that have increased over the time duration. From the table above, we can predict the future load (in tonnes) at a given point in future using the equation: Crude oil is one of the major energy resources and a key raw material in numerous industrial sectors. In view of this, forces of demand have a great impact on the crude oil industry (Abouarghoub, Mariscal and Howells, 2012). Demand and supply of crude oil have in the past been characterized by low price elasticity which has impacted global price fluctuations.

According to Alizadeh and Nomikos (2006), such fluctuations occur because the oil market is highly unpredictable and the fact that changes in demand and supply are not easily predictable despite such changes having a huge economic impact. The oil tanker shipping market has a perfect competitive structure characterized by a huge number of producers who compete to satisfy the huge global demand for internationally produced commodities (Fox, 1992). In such a case, neither the suppliers nor the buyers have the ability to set the prices, since prices of crude oil are determined at the world market.

The economic implication of global oil market pricing patterns is that cost as a market determiner plays a major role in the establishment of sale prices (Austria, 2003; Sato, 2002).