The price of modern maritime piracy

Abstract

A growing body of literature has recently focused on the economic origins and consequences of modern maritime piracy and on the perception that the international community has failed to control it. This paper aims to investigate maritime transport costs as one of the channels through which modern maritime piracy could have a major impact on the global economy. A transport-cost equation is estimated using a newly released data-set on maritime transport costs from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development together with data on maritime piracy from the International Maritime Bureau. Our results show that maritime piracy significantly increases trade costs between Europe and Asia.