ABSTRACT
Financial symbols, particularly the ones representing money itself, prime people’s selfish motives, as behavioral economics and neuroeconomics have found. Financing ships is probably the most specialized sector in the world of banking and finance. Newcomers to the industry in particular need a facilitating agent who can teach them and convert their needs into what shipping bankers want to hear. Shipping bankers want to make deals with shipowners who have a strong balance sheet and a high level of liquidity. Shipping banks have developed new systems, procedures, policies, and models. When everything is going well and the market is at a peak, lenders tend to finance easily, and vice versa. Lenders finance and share their risk with risk-seeking investors in the bond market. The relationship between shipowners and lenders is somewhat like supply and demand in economics, but there is also a give-and-take dimension in terms of behavioral economics.
