Economics and Maritime Transport

As defined in an economics textbook (Lipsey 1992) economics concerns :

1. The allocation of a society resources among alternative uses and the distribution of the society's output among individuals and groups at a point in time;
2. The ways in which allocation and distribution change overtime;
3. The Efficiencies and Inefficiencies of economic systems.

Economics can also broadly divided into two branches: microeconomics and macroeconomics. The different between them is at the level of aggregation used.

Microeconomic deals with the determination of prices and quantities in individual market and with the relations among these markets.

Macroeconomic focused on much broader aggregate by looking at e.g. total number of people employed, the total number of national output and consumption, the balance of trade of a country, every level of prices and its changes.

One may also conclude that microeconomics is about the economic question (e.g. allocation of resources) of an industry, a sector, a firm, a family or a person, whilst macroeconomics is about the economic decision of a country, or a region or the world.

Maritime transport is in transportation sectors, maritime economics therefore belongs to the scope of microeconomics.