Chang, C.-W.; Hsueh, M.-H.; Wang, C.-N.; Huang, C.-C. Exploring the Factors Influencing the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Global Shipping: A Case Study of the Baltic Dry Index. Sustainability2023, 15, 11367.
Chang, C.-W.; Hsueh, M.-H.; Wang, C.-N.; Huang, C.-C. Exploring the Factors Influencing the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Global Shipping: A Case Study of the Baltic Dry Index. Sustainability 2023, 15, 11367.
Chang, C.-W.; Hsueh, M.-H.; Wang, C.-N.; Huang, C.-C. Exploring the Factors Influencing the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Global Shipping: A Case Study of the Baltic Dry Index. Sustainability2023, 15, 11367.
Chang, C.-W.; Hsueh, M.-H.; Wang, C.-N.; Huang, C.-C. Exploring the Factors Influencing the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Global Shipping: A Case Study of the Baltic Dry Index. Sustainability 2023, 15, 11367.
Abstract
The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 caused significant disruptions to global shipping and the world economy. This paper aims to investigate the impact of the pandemic on global shipping by analyzing the Baltic Dry Index (BDI). The BDI is a metric that reflects the worldwide shipping costs and directs related to supply and demand conditions, making it an indicator of economic production. The study utilizes data from 2019 to 2021, before and after the outbreak of COVID-19, and considers 13 independent variables, including raw materials, energy, stock market indexes, global port calls, and confirmed COVID-19 cases to investigate how to influent the BDI. The study employs stepwise regression to select variables and build models before and after the pandemic. The findings reveal that the key factors affecting the freight index BDI before the outbreak are: international scrap steel prices, iron ore prices, and the Commodity Research Bureau Index. However, after the COVID-19 outbreak, the factors affecting the BDI changed to the Shanghai Index, global port calls, and the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases.
Keywords
Baltic Dry Index; Covid-19; Stepwise Regression
Subject
Business, Economics and Management, Business and Management
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
