Containerships and Black Swans: The Impact of Disruptive Events on the Industry

Abstract

This paper is investigating the behavior and reactions of container shipping lines to two unforeseen crisis events that had occurred in a time span of a dozen years, the financial and economic crisis following the Lehman collapse in 2008/09 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. We frame both events as “black swans” and observe similarities and differences that occurred especially in the pricing of transportation services provided by container shipping lines and their impact on the wider container shipping market. Based on market data we will show how the container liner companies have evolved over a little more than a decade and how they changed their behavior, approached the markets differently and reacted faster and more actively. Furthermore, we try to introduce first avenues of explanation that may be the underlying factors for such behavioral adaptation.