Investor domicile and second-hand ship sale prices

This paper investigates the contribution of investor domicile effects to second-hand bulk transaction price formation. The dataset covers transactions for Handysize bulk carriers between 1996 and 2016. We apply a two-stage regression approach, first capturing the effects of vessel age and market conditions in a non-parametric model and, in a second stage, adapting fixed-effect models to investigate investor domicile effects and ship-specific factors. We show that investor domicile effects, as well as domicile match effects, can have a statistically significant impact on sales prices. We suggest that these effects may be due to domestic economic conditions affecting the cost of financing, average investor experience, and cultural biases in negotiations.