Major Factors Affecting Shanghai Shipping Freight Rates during the Covid-19 Pandemic: Inspecting and Ranking by Grey Relational Analysis

Hsiang-Hsi Liu^1, , Fu-Hsiang Kuo² and Guan-Ting Liu³

¹Graduate Institute of International Business, National Taipei University, New Taipei City, Taiwan

²Department of Finance, National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Yunlin County, Taiwan

³Department of Shipping and Transportation Management, National Taiwan Ocean University, Taiwan

Cite this paper:
Hsiang-Hsi Liu, Fu-Hsiang Kuo and Guan-Ting Liu. Major Factors Affecting Shanghai Shipping Freight Rates during the Covid-19 Pandemic: Inspecting and Ranking by Grey Relational Analysis. Journal of Finance and Economics. 2024; 12(2):29-38. doi: 10.12691/jfe-12-2-2

Abstract

This study aims to GRA (Grey relational analysis) method to analyze the factors that affect Shanghai shipping rates(∆SCFI) and which factors will play a key role under the impact of COVID-19 epidemic outbreak. GRA method can analyze the weight relationship between factors and their attributes to explore the factors that affect the shipping rates. We find that the change rate of the main route's on-time rates of receiving and dispatching scheduled services (∆OTRADSCI) affects the change rate of Shanghai shipping freight rates the strongest, followed by the change rate of the main route's on-time arrival and departure service rates (∆OTRRSRCI) and the change rate of China export container freight rates (∆CCF). Subsequently, the change rate of China international seafarer salary (∆CISSI), the change rate of China senior seafarer salary (∆CSSSI) and the change rate of China ordinary seafarer salary (∆COSSI) gave the strong influence to the Shanghai shipping freight rates. While, the change rate of Shanghai port container handling volumes (or throughput) (∆SPCV) gave the least effect to the Shanghai shipping freight rates during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019-2020. It is hoped that these findings can help policy makers in making decisions on port management/operations and future port development.

Keywords:
COVID-19 epidemic Shipping freight rates Grey relational analysis (GRA)

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