Shipping alliances (SAs) can facilitate their members’ coordination on price and capacity decisions. Although this helps reduce the oversupply of capacity and cutthroat competition during market downturns, the possible freight rate increase due to potential collusion among member shipping lines is another concern. This study aims to empirically investigate the impacts of SAs on container freight rates on nine major shipping corridors for the period from 2015 to 2020. To measure market concentration, data from a satellite-based Automatic Information System (AIS) is used to identify liner shipping companies' services in each market. We propose to use the alliance-level Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) and Concentration Ratio Index (CR) to measure market concentration. Then we used the simulated market concentration measures as the instrumental variable to address the endogeneity issue between freight rates and alliances’ market share. The main finding is that both alliance-level HHI and CR are negatively associated with freight rates, implying that SAs may help reduce prices. This finding provides new insights for antitrust authorities when investigating alliance applications in the liner shipping sector.

中文翻译：

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航运联盟会影响运价吗？来自全球卫星船数据的证据

航运联盟（SA）可以促进其成员在价格和运力决策方面的协调。尽管这有助于减少市场低迷时期的运力供过于求和激烈竞争，但成员航运公司之间潜在的串通可能导致运价上涨也是另一个担忧。本研究旨在实证调查 2015 年至 2020 年期间 SA 对九个主要航运走廊集装箱运费的影响。为了衡量市场集中度，使用基于卫星的自动信息系统 (AIS) 的数据来识别班轮运输公司在每个市场的服务。我们建议使用联盟级赫芬达尔-赫希曼指数（HHI）和集中度指数（CR）来衡量市场集中度。然后，我们使用模拟的市场集中度指标作为工具变量来解决运价与联盟市场份额之间的内生性问题。主要发现是，联盟级别的 HHI 和 CR 都与运费负相关，这意味着 SA 可能有助于降低价格。这一发现为反垄断机构在调查班轮运输领域的联盟申请时提供了新的见解。