The Box - Marc Levinson [188]
12. The German Liner Index did not purport to measure rates on freight in other parts of the world. As UNCTAD pointed out, it did not fully reflect changes in rates or surcharges and was “rather narrowly based and greatly influenced by declining currency exchange ratios of the Deutschmark versus the United States dollar.” See UNCTAD, Review of Maritime Transport 1972–73, p. 81, and 1984, p. 42. It also appears that the index as published in the 1960s and 1970s did not clearly distinguish liner freight rates overall from container shipping rates. The index as published in the 1990s did make this distinction, revealing very different trends. The index for all liner rates, for example, fell from 101 in January 1994 to 96 in June 1997, whereas the subindex for container rates fell much more steeply, from 101 to 90, during the same period. See UNCTAD, Review of Maritime Transport 1997, p. 50. For more discussion of both indexes and an attempt to adjust them for inflation, see Hummels, “Have International Transportation Costs Declined?”
13. For the Hansen index, see Fairplay, January 15, 1981, p. 15.
14. Tursi, White, and McQuilkin, Lost Empire, p. 185.
15. UNCTAD’s annual Review of Maritime Transport provides data on container shipping in developing countries; see also Pearson and Fossey, World Deep-Sea Container Shipping, p. 27. The containerized share of U.S. imports appears in the Review for 1974, p. 51.
16. Sletmo and Williams, Liner Conferences, p. 80.
17. According to Pacific Maritime Association data, base wages for longshoremen on the U.S. Pacific Coast nearly doubled, from $3.88 per hour in July 1966 to $7.52 in July 1976. Data available at www.pmanet.org. At U.S. North Atlantic ports, longshoremen who were entitled to four weeks’ vacation and eleven paid holidays in 1966 were eligible for six weeks’ vacation and thirteen paid holidays by the early 1970s. Longshore News, November 1969, p. 4A.
18. OECD, “Ocean Freight Rates as Part of Total Transport Costs,” p. 31.
19. Hummels, “Have International Transportation Costs Declined?”; Fairplay, May 16, 1968, p. 49.
20. On New Zealand, see Fairplay, February 19, 1976, p. 3.
21. No accurate measures of insurance-rate changes are available. Insurers initially resisted lowering rates for container shipments, mainly with the reasoning that container shipping might lead to less frequent but larger losses if an entire container were stolen or damaged. In addition, a full container was usually handed off from one carrier to another without being opened, making it difficult to determine which carrier was responsible if damage did occur. Fairplay, September 2, 1971; Insurance Institute of London, “An Examination of the Changing Nature of Cargo Insurance Following the Introduction of Containers,” January 1969. By 1973, an insurance expert was ready to admit that “[c]argoes carried in containers appear to be bringing improved claims experience.” Fairplay, July 5, 1973, p. 55.
22. Marad, “Current Trends in Port Pricing” (Washington, DC, 1978), p. 19.
23. Real oil prices in dollar terms rose until 1981; see U.S. Department of Energy, Annual Energy Review (Washington, DC, 2003), Table 5.21. The German liner-freight index discussed above also began to decline in the late 1970s, after adjustment for inflation.
24. Pedro L. Marin and Richard Sicotte, “Exclusive Contracts and Market Power: Evidence from Ocean Shipping,” Discussion Paper 2028, Centre for Economic Policy Research, June 2001; comment from J. G. Payne, vice chairman of Blue Star Line, in Fairplay, April 11, 1974, p. 7.
25. The former competitors involved in the North Atlantic Pool were American Export-Isbrandtsen Line, Belgian Line, Bristol City Line, Clarke Traffic Services, Cunard Line, French Line, Hamburg-American Line, Holland-America Line, North German Lloyd, Sea-Land Service, Seatrain Lines, Swedish American Lines, Swedish Transatlantic Lines, United States Lines, and Wallenius Line. On shippers’ councils, see U.S. General Accounting Office, Changes in Federal Maritime Regulation