LEADER 00000nam  2200349   4500 
001    AAI9206518 
005    20061211115734.5 
008    061211s1991                        eng d 
035    (UnM)AAI9206518 
040    UnM|cUnM 
100 1  Khanti-Akom, Sophon 
245 10 Essays on the economic analysis of oil tanker 
       transportation 
300    114 p 
500    Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-
       09, Section: A, page: 3365 
500    Co-Chairs: Raymond C. Battalio; Thomas R. Saving 
502    Thesis (Ph.D.)--Texas A&M University, 1991 
520    This dissertation provides both theoretical and empirical 
       insights on tanker owner behavior and tanker operator 
       performance in the oil tanker transportation industry. 
       Furthermore, it develops an econometric method to estimate
       and analyze cost and production structures of oil tanker 
       transportation 
520    Three models concerning the economic analysis of the oil 
       tanker market are considered in this dissertation 
520    The first model studies the behavior of a risk-neutral 
       tanker owner under a stochastic framework. I use a dynamic
       linear rational expectations model to explore the tanker 
       owner's decisions regarding his tanker fleet in response 
       to freight rate changes. The model assumes that the tanker
       owner operates in a competitive tanker market, in the 
       sense that the stochastic freight rates are exogenously 
       given in the model. In order to obtain explicit solutions 
       of the tanker owner's optimal plans, I exploit a popular 
       linear-quadratic rational expectations model. The tanker 
       owner's optimal decision rules on the allocations of the 
       spot, time-charter, and laid-up tanker fleet are derived. 
       The estimation strategy of structural, behaviorally 
       invariant parameters of the model under the hypothesis of 
       rational expectations is also illustrated 
520    The second model in the dissertation investigates the 
       economic performance of oil tanker operations. The 
       productivity growth of the tanker industry is explored. A 
       general index of technical change developed by Baltagi and
       Griffin (1988) is used to examine the rate of technical 
       change of the U.S. flag tankers from 1978 to 1984. With 
       the advantages of panel data, the translog cost model is 
       used to formulate the general index of technical change. 
       To derive the general index, I first estimate parameters 
       of the translog cost function and then use the estimated 
       results to calculate the index of technical change. In 
       addition, to understand the underlying technological 
       characteristics of tanker operations, I examine the cost 
       structures and scale economies of the tanker industry 
520    The third model of the dissertation compares econometric 
       techniques using panel data to estimate a system of the 
       multivariate translog model. The equation system for the 
       translog cost model consists of a cost function and input-
       share equations which are used in specifying the model. 
       The proposed technique, which assumes random effects for 
       the unobservable variables, and the conventional technique,
       which assumes fixed effects of the unobservable variables,
       are applied to panel data consisting of forty U.S. tankers
       for the 1978-1984 period. Specification tests are 
       performed, and they favor the random-effect model over the
       fixed-effect model 
590    School code: 0803 
590    DDC 
650  4 Economics, General 
690    0501 
710 20 Texas A&M University 
773 0  |tDissertation Abstracts International|g52-09A 
856 40 |uhttp://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/
       advanced?query=9206518