Papers by Dimitris Gavalas
Pomorstvo, Dec 20, 2023
Greek shipping is the world's leading power and is well known for its efficiency and performance.... more Greek shipping is the world's leading power and is well known for its efficiency and performance. The Greek fleet represents almost 21% of the global fleet in terms of capacity (deadweight tonnes -dwt) and 60% of the European Union's one (Union of Greek Shipowners, 2023). Apart from the entrepreneurship competence of Greek shipowners, the contribution of Greek seafarers to the development of the so-called "Greek maritime miracle" has been decisive. Greek seafarers are known for their seamanship, qualities as well as their skills. However, according to data from the Hellenic Statistical Authority, the number of Greek seafarers is diachronically decreasing. Indicative of this trend is the fact that from 2000 to 2020, the number of Greek seafarers employed in Greek-owned vessels reduced by 45% (18.450 in 2000 vs. 10.087 in 2020). The aim of this research is twofold: first, to identify the reasons for the decreasing trend in the number of the Greek seafarers and, second, to highlight the initiatives and other actions the Greek shipping community could adopt in order to attract highly qualified seafarers to the Greek-owned fleet. In this context, a qualitative study was conducted, the purpose of which was to investigate the views of industry's stakeholders, in respect to the factors that shape the downward trend of seafarers figures. The outcome of this study sheds light on the reasons affecting the attractiveness of seafaring profession and further actions required for addressing promotion gaps.
Maritime Technology and Research, Oct 2, 2023
Given that stakeholders are paying more and more attention to the environmental, social, and gove... more Given that stakeholders are paying more and more attention to the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies of firms, the objective of this paper is to study the effect of ESG disclosure on firm performance, focusing on companies involved in port activities; precisely, (i) a port company/authority, (ii) a terminal operator/stevedore, and (iii) an integrated carrier. The study contributes to the existing knowledge by incorporating ESG scores and looking at factors that indicate financial strength. The contribution of our study will lie in complementing and adding to the existing knowledge, along with further incentivizing sustainable firm performance. This study discovers that a positive relationship between ESG disclosure, firm value, and firm performance exists, as determined by market-to-book ratio and Q ratio, respectively. It considers a panel regression examination, by means of a sample of 213 publicly listed ports and considering a time period of 5 years. This study will benefit scholars, decision-makers, legislators, and stakeholders of ports through improving their comprehension of how ESG disclosure affects the performance of firms, in general and specifically for each pillar.
Conceptualizing and validating a customer satisfaction measurement model in e-services. Evidence from the Greek e-banking sector
International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management
Competitive strategies and integration expanses in the large shipping container industry during an era of consecutive global crises
Maritime Technology and Research
Purpose: This research aims to examine the competitive strategies and integration expanses of thr... more Purpose: This research aims to examine the competitive strategies and integration expanses of three of the largest shipping container companies worldwide, attempting to provide a helpful insight into the strategies adopted and implemented by the shipping container companies in question, in order to overcome the multiple significant obstacles resulting from the consecutive global crises of recent years (the post 2008 global financial crisis, pandemic, and war in Ukraine). Design/approach: The present paper (as a Case Study) examined three large shipping container companies that have played a crucial role in global trade over the years. These are three of the largest in 2023 (Hapag Lloyd, COSCO Shipping Lines, and Maersk). The criteria of these selected companies were mainly the authors’ focus on the significance for the industry of the mentioned three large shipping container companies, as well as the volume of information that could gathered by secondary data sources. Secondary data...
Journal of Shipping and Trade
The COVID-19 pandemic has augmented pre-existing digitalization and environmental trends. In the ... more The COVID-19 pandemic has augmented pre-existing digitalization and environmental trends. In the maritime industry, one of the marked impacts of the pandemic is how the regard for technology has changed. There is now greater appetite and acceptance of digital solutions across the industry. This study investigates the ways the adoption of a series of digital technologies impact shipping firms’ efficiency, that will shed light on how industry stakeholders may derive value from data solutions, for making better operational decisions. We use cross-country firm-level data to evaluate the efficiency effects of maritime industry-level digital adoption. The results provide robust proof that working in a digitalized ecosystem is a way to promote efficiency, though not to the same extent across shipping firms and divisions. Impacts are relatively stronger in water transport activities than warehousing/support activities for transportation. Digital technologies may add to the growing diffusion...
Exploring the Cyclical Stance of the Shipping Market; Introducing the Shipping Climate Tracer
International Journal of Transport Economics, Jul 1, 2016
Assessing key performance indicators in the shipbuilding industry; an MCDM approach
Maritime Policy & Management, 2021
A series of countries have focused on shipbuilding public policies, as it is commonly considered ... more A series of countries have focused on shipbuilding public policies, as it is commonly considered a deliberate industry and influences employment levels in many regions. Establishing key performance...
Review of Economics and Finance, 2020
Job satisfaction and job burnout are two concepts strongly mentioned in the literature, having co... more Job satisfaction and job burnout are two concepts strongly mentioned in the literature, having confirmed a negative correlation between job satisfaction and job burnout. In the banking sector, research shows that job burnout is a frequent occurrence, highlighting the negative correlation between job burnout of bank employees and their job satisfaction. This paper explores the perceptions of bank employees in Greece regarding their level of job satisfaction and job burnout. The possible correlations between these two variables and the possible impact of demographics are also studied. The results are believed to offer significant implications for future research and practice in the Greek banking sector that has received a number of changes such as procedures from acquisitions and mergers and voluntary withdrawals in the human resource area, trying to find a way out of the consequences of the crisis.
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Abstract: Credit risk measurement remains a critical field of top priority in banking finance, di... more Abstract: Credit risk measurement remains a critical field of top priority in banking finance, directly implicated in the recent global financial crisis. This paper examines the dynamic linkages between credit risk migration due to rating shifts and prevailing macroeconomic conditions, reflected in alternative business cycle states. An innovative empirical methodology applies to bank internal rating data, under different economic scenarios and investigates the implications of credit risk quality shifts for risk rating transition matrices. The empirical findings are useful and critical for banks to align to Basel guidelines in relation to core capital requirements and risk-weighted assets in the underlying loan portfolio.
COVID–19 impact on the shipping industry: An event study approach
Transport Policy, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic, apart from leading to human cases and deaths, is also distracting the ship... more The COVID-19 pandemic, apart from leading to human cases and deaths, is also distracting the shipping stock market and the Baltic Indices. While event studies, as well as macroeconomic research has been conducted in the literature, we have not witnessed any effort yet to investigate how external shocks - and in particular the COVID-19 outbreak - may impinge on the shipping markets. Therefore, our research tries to fill in this gap by studying how a sanitary incident might influence shipping freight rates and stock values. We have used a market-model event study approach to investigate how fast and comprehensively shipping markets react upon certain latest evidence. To quantify the pandemic's economic impact, we estimated the abnormal returns; in a phase before and after the event, they may work as a measure of the unexpected effect of the event on a shipping firm's performance. The data that we have used in stock analysis come from a major shipping index, while for our freight study, time-series come from all main Baltic indices. Our results show that according to the key date set as the event window, different results appear of how pandemic-proof the dry market, the tanker market, and the shipping stock market have proven to be.
International Journal of Accounting and Financial Reporting, 2018
Corporate financial distress and cashflow liquidity constraints are seen to intensify during prol... more Corporate financial distress and cashflow liquidity constraints are seen to intensify during prolonged recessionary business cycle phases. On the other hand, companies that consistently pursue corporate social responsible strategies pay attention to smoothly cater towards their stakeholders even at harsh market times. This study investigates dynamic perspectives of corporate financial distress and social responsibility interactions, in a company life-cycle setting. The shipping industry is taken as an empirical case to study these issues at hand, based on a selected sample of 84 publicly-listed shipping companies, over 2010–2016. The empirical findings indicate that positive corporate social responsibility approaches minimize financial distress probabilities for shipping companies. Furthermore, this inverse interaction between positive corporate social responsibility and financial distress is found to be more robust for shipping companies in their mature stage of their life-cycle path.
International Journal of Accounting and Finance Studies, 2019
Trying to understand how cost behaves seems to be an essential element of cost and management acc... more Trying to understand how cost behaves seems to be an essential element of cost and management accounting. In this study, we examine whether costs increase more when operation rises than they decrease when operation falls by an equivalent amount. The shipping industry is taken as an empirical case to study these issues at hand, based on a selected sample of 123 publicly-listed shipping companies, over 2006-2016. The sample includes companies belonging to the three main shipping sectors, i.e. tankers, containers and dry-bulk. We applied pooled regressions, based on ordinary least squares. Each model is run for each sample and each type of cost that we have considered in our model. We have gone through several tests of cost stickiness for some types of costs and their determinants. What we have found is the presence of stickiness both for the total cost of labor and the vessel operating costs.
Journal of Economics and Business, 2015
In late 2010, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision issued the Basel III document enumeratin... more In late 2010, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision issued the Basel III document enumerating measures focused on improvements in the definition of regulatory capital, introduction of a leverage ratio as a backstop for risk-based capital requirement, capital buffers, enhancement of risk coverage through improvements in the methodology to measure counterparty credit risk and liquidity measurement standards. This study investigates the impact of the new capital requirements introduced under the Basel III framework on bank lending rates and loan growth. Higher capital requirements, by raising banks' marginal cost of funding, lead to higher lending rates. The data presented in the paper suggest that assuming a 1.3 percentage point increase in the equity-to-asset ratio to meet the Basel III regulations, the country-by-country estimations imply a reduction in the volume of loans by an average 4.97 percent in the long run for the banks in countries that experienced a crisis and by 18.67 percent for the banks in countries that did not experience a crisis. The wide variance in the results reflects crosscountry differences in the elasticity of loan demand with respect to loan interest rate and bank's net cost of raising equity.
Which risk–collateral channels affect loan management?
The Journal of Energy Markets, 2015
Loan collateral assets are critical complementary bank credit instruments, pledged to a bank loan... more Loan collateral assets are critical complementary bank credit instruments, pledged to a bank loan and intended to support and secure the enduring performance of this underlying credit facility. As a bank security mechanism, collaterals are considered an important mechanism to decrease credit rationing and credibly signal borrowers' quality. To investigate why the empirical relation between loan risk and collateral is sometimes positive and sometimes negative, this paper provides a potential solution by examining the empirical relation between loan risk and the economic characteristics of collateral, both of which may be associated with the empirical dominance of different risk–collateral channels implied by economic theory. The relation between loan risk and collateral is examined by conducting two sets of empirical tests delineated by the loan risk premiums and ex post nonperformance. Each set of tests explores the relation between the risk measure and the overall incidence of collateral, as well as the economic characteristics of the collateral pledges. Regressions include several control variables, including firm, relationship and loan variables, as well as fixed effects for region, bank, industry and time, and sometimes interactions of firm-, bank-and time-fixed effects. We give evidence to support the notion that, for collateral overall, the " lender selection " channel is an important motivation for collateral pledges, and the
Modern Economy, 2016
The concept of this study is to note whether financial risk assessment tools impact a shipping fi... more The concept of this study is to note whether financial risk assessment tools impact a shipping firm's performance, competitiveness and efficiency. Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) is used in the evaluation of such issues. The shipping industry has been classified in three segments, namely dry bulk, tankers (including LPG and LNG) and containers. The influence of the risk assessment indicators on market and operational efficiency is subsequently determined by using a panel regression. This assists to determine whether different asset allocation and risk management techniques improve the performance of shipping firms. Our sample consists of 82 international shipowning firms drawn from Bloomberg database for the period of 2001-2014. Through estimating efficiency, our model shows that containerized cargo firms have better performance in market and operating efficiency as well.
Sustainable Logistics and Strategic Transportation Planning
Banks select convenient loan collateral assets to secure the uninterrupted service of a loan faci... more Banks select convenient loan collateral assets to secure the uninterrupted service of a loan facility. In the adverse case of a borrower in default, collateral assets provide critical last resort coverage for bank loan recovery. Nevertheless, collaterals may provide least protection when they are most needed. Recessionary economic cycle phases, unstable capital markets, liquidity constraints and financial crises amplify abrupt downward collateral value shifts. This, in turn, can result to outstanding loans being exposed to diminishing collateral values, substantially increasing the bank's asset-liability mismatch. This study proposes an integrated and flexible framework to support a preferential collateral asset selection process for lending banks. Two multi-criteria decision making methods are critically compared and evaluated, in order to gain insight into the identification, evaluation and ranking process of important quantitative and qualitative collateral selection criteria. Bank shipping finance is undertaken as an empirical case study.
Journal of Finance and Bank Management, 2014
In late 2010, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision issued the Basel III document enumeratin... more In late 2010, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision issued the Basel III document enumerating measures focused on improvements in the definition of regulatory capital, introduction of a leverage ratio as a backstop for risk-based capital requirement, capital buffers, enhancement of risk coverage through improvements in the methodology to measure counterparty credit risk and liquidity measurement standards. This study investigates the impact of the new capital requirements introduced under the Basel III framework on bank lending rates and loan growth. Higher capital requirements, by raising banks' marginal cost of funding, lead to higher lending rates. The data presented in the paper suggest that assuming a 1.3 percentage point increase in the equity-to-asset ratio to meet the Basel III regulations, the country-by-country estimations imply a reduction in the volume of loans by an average 4.97 percent in the long run for the banks in countries that experienced a crisis and by 18.67 percent for the banks in countries that did not experience a crisis. The wide variance in the results reflects crosscountry differences in the elasticity of loan demand with respect to loan interest rateand bank's net cost of raising equity.
The effects of Basel III on banking performance; examining lending issues
International Journal of Financial Studies, 2014
Credit risk measurement remains a critical field of top priority in banking finance, directly imp... more Credit risk measurement remains a critical field of top priority in banking finance, directly implicated in the recent global financial crisis. This paper examines the dynamic linkages between credit risk migration due to rating shifts and prevailing macroeconomic conditions, reflected in alternative business cycle states. An innovative empirical methodology applies to bank internal rating data, under different economic scenarios and investigates the implications of credit risk quality shifts for risk rating transition matrices. The empirical findings are useful and critical for banks to align to Basel guidelines in relation to core capital requirements and risk-weighted assets in the underlying loan portfolio.
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Papers by Dimitris Gavalas