ANALYSIS ON VESSEL REGISTRATION AND OPERATIONAL PERFORMANCE OF BULK-SHIPPING FIRMS

It has become one important strategy for shipowners to improve their competitiveness by shifting their vessels registration to the countries with more comparative advantages, especially to the Flag of Convenience (FOC). Although the phenomena and causes of vessel flagging out have been discussed in literatures, differentiation on the characteristics of liner and bulk shipping markets with systematic and quantified analysis has not been found. In order to quantify the influence of related factors to the vessel registrations of Taiwan's bulk shipping firms, this study develops a hierarchical analysis framework that consists of four different aspects of objectives being applied by AHP method. Operational performances of five selected public bulk-shipping firms are then analyzed using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method. Inputs and outputs are selected based on the concepts of production function, and the window analysis method is adopted to overcome the limitation of small sample sizes. Finally, the relationships of vessel registration and operational performance of these firms are further explored.