Empirical analysis of the effectiveness of the legislative framework in the maritime industry

Abstract

We analyze the effectiveness of the legislative framework of the maritime industry developed by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the International Labor Organization (ILO) and regional regulators and industry. With a unique combination of 310 time series using data of 44 years (1977–2020), we use 41 econometric models to highlight the effect of 116 main legislative milestones and their variants. We consider multiple endpoints of interest such as safety, piracy and crime, oil and chemical pollution, biosecurity, and air emissions. The results demonstrate that qualities of the fleet have improved. The time between adoption and entry into force lies at 3.83 years on average while negative effects are equally important for the time between adoption and entry into force as compliance often is obtained prior to entry into force of a requirement. Safety related milestones lead with measured negative effects followed by pollution and good results are found for the fishing fleet. Regional measures show stronger negative effects due to increased enforcement powers. Many of the milestones of interest show the desired effect of reducing incidents or decreasing pollution including the IMO International Safety Management Code, the Instruments Implementation Code, the Recognized Organization Code (RO), several SOLAS specific codes dealing with stability, fire testing and construction, the IMO Member States Audit Scheme, MARPOL Annex I, II and VI. Although human related areas improved compared to a previous study, there is still room for improvement.