This book analyses shipping markets and their interdependence. This ground-breaking text develops a new macroeconomic approach to maritime economics and provides the reader with a more comprehensive understanding of the way modern shipping markets function.

The 21st century has seen shipping evolve from a fundamental transport industry into an asset which is at the mercy of speculative flows and business cycles. This structural shift has a number of important ramifications for the business of shipping as well as for investment strategy. This ground breaking text develops a new macroeconomic approach to maritime economics, with an emphasis on the individual shipping markets and their interdependence, in order to arm the reader with a more comprehensive understanding of the way modern shipping markets function and enable the making of critical decisions such as when to buy and sell ships and when to be in the spot or the period market.Karakitsos and Varnavides bring together their wealth of experience in shipping, finance and academia to make a number of key contributions to the study of maritime economics including: -Viewing Freight rates as asset prices determined as a bargaining game between charterers and owners who form expectations of future demand and supply to create a dynamic analysis of freight rates.-Theorising ships as assets, where prices are determined by demand and supply. -Explaining how the demand for vessels is derived as a dynamic problem of fleet capacity expansion.-Integrating the supply and the expectations approaches to shipping cycles.-Explaining how shipping cycles are caused by business cycles and expectations in demand by integrating maritime economics with macroeconomics.Maritime Economics: A Macroeconomic Approach is divided into three distinct parts; Part I analyses the micro-foundations of maritime economics, by deriving the demand and supply functions in the freight (spot and period), shipyard, second-hand and scrap markets. Part II reviews the efficiency of shipping markets and the theory of business and shipping cycles. Part III analyses the financialisation of shipping markets, the constraints of ship finance, the interaction between business and shipping cycles, and offers a case study of how decisions should be taken.This key text is indispensable reading for advanced undergraduate students studying maritime economics or shipping degrees as well as for professionals working in the shipping industry or in the financial sector.

The financial crisis and the ensued 'great recession' are primarily caused by the excessive liquidity that was created in the last thirty years or so of inequality that benefited greatly the financial sector, deregulation and financial liberalisation as well as financial innovation, which are based on the supposedly superior intellectual model of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis. There were also contributory factors that accentuated the process, such as international financial imbalances, the monetary policy pursued at the time, and the role played by the credit rating agencies. The New Consensus Macroeconomics model that forms the backbone of the way the economy works and how monetary policy should be formulated in theory and practice is scrutinised. It is argued that the traditional approach of viewing housing as a capital good must be dropped and housing should be viewed as a speculative asset, akin to equities. This new theorising is necessary as in the traditional approach bubbles cannot exist. A chapter is devoted to the causes of the European Union (EU) debt crisis, the reasons why the crisis has dragged on, the remedial treatment applied so far, offering alternative viable solutions to the crisis and examining the channels through which the EU debt crisis might spread to the rest of the world. Finally, the book draws on the lessons for theory and policy from the recent experience and discusses in detail the new regulatory environment that policymakers attempt to put in place to avert another credit crisis.

The financial crisis and the ensued 'great recession' are primarily caused by the excessive liquidity that was created in the last thirty years or so of inequality that benefited greatly the financial sector, deregulation and financial liberalisation as well as financial innovation.

The US is slowly recovering from the aftermath of the burst of the "new economy" bubble--which was one of the worst in monetary history. Philip Arestis and Elias Karakitsos examine the causes and consequences of the burst of the "new economy" bubble and investigate the impact on financial markets. The risks and long-term prospects for the economy and financial markets are also examined.

The US is slowly recovering from the aftermath of the burst of the "new economy" bubble--which was one of the worst in monetary history. Philip Arestis and Elias Karakitsos examine the causes and consequences of the burst of the "new economy" bubble and investigate the impact on financial markets. The risks and long-term prospects for the economy and financial markets are also examined.