ABSTRACT
In the first part of the chapter we will examine the regional distribution of shipbuilding capacity in the 1980s and the relationship between the level of shipping and shipbuilding activity. We then consider shipbuilding market economics, looking in particular at the shipbuilding market cycle, the price mechanism and the influences on the supply of and demand for shipbuilding output. The section on shipbuilding ends with a discussion of competitiveness and the related issues of capacity measurement, the production process and international comparisons of productivity. The second part of the chapter discusses the process by which ships are scrapped, the market for scrap products and the international structure of the ship scrapping industry. Finally, in this chapter we introduce a new unit of measurement, the compensated gross ton (cgt). The cgt of a ship is derived from its gross tonnage (gt), but weighted to take account of the work content of that particular ship typedetailed definitions can be found in Appendix 2.
