MARITIME ALLIANCES AND EU COMPETITION LAW

103 DOMINANT POSITION AND ABUSE INDICATORS IN LINER SHIPPING that suggests that, in the absence of a forum for carrier discussions and informa- tion sharing, market concentration may increase slightly more rapidly. Moreover, the Report denotes a relative decline in market share stability that may be related to rate volatility and market concentration. Market share stability noticeably de- clined in the Far East/North Europe trade in the post-repeal period. That was also the trade in which relative rate volatility and market concentration appeared to have increased. In contrast, there was increased market share stability in the Far East/US trade. Τhe matter in investigated further in the book, as we shall explain the pattern that could lead to unintended concentration in the shipping markets. We examine the matter from the economic point view, borrowing elements from the equilibrium theories of Pareto 116 and Nash. 117 Bearing in mind Nash ’s theory on actors’ strategies, if certain conditions are satis- fied, then an equilibrium could exist in the strategies among the consortium and independent actors; however, a substitution of equilibrium in mixed strategies is observed. In such equilibrium, firms constantly try to take each other by surprise, in ways similar to circling behaviour, so that no stable number of carriers exist. In a simplified approach, the market could then be described as circling dynamic behaviour among a few firms. 12.2 Shares of Independents and the Economy Nowadays, independent liner companies that offer high quality services with ad- equate modern vessels have eroded the oligopoly of traditional liner companies by matching their levels of service. Independents’ market policies have changed in the last decade. It may be wrongly deemed that the traditional structure of a dominant conference service and a small contingent of opportunistic outsiders (attracting 116. Vilfredo Pareto, Manual of Political Economy. A Critical and Variorum Edition , edited by Aldo Montesano and Alberto Zanni and Luigino Bruni and John S. Chipman and Michael McLure (eds) [Oxford University Press 2014, first published 1905] 72 et seq. Pareto effi- ciency or Pareto optimality is a state of allocation of resources from which it is impossible to reallocate so as to make any one individual or preference criterion better off without making at least one individual or preference criterion worse off. In this context, the first fundamental theorem of welfare economics, that states that if certain conditions are met, market mechanism leads to Pareto-optimal allocation of resources. See also Kenneth J Ar- row, “The potentials and limits of the market in resource allocation” in George R Feiwel (ed.), Issues in Contemporary Microeconomics and Welfare [London: Palgrave Macmillan 1985] 110-111; Chris Jones, Applied Welfare Economics [Oxford University Press 2005] 1-2; 117. John Nash, “Equilibrium Points in N-person Games” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [1950] 36, 48-49; John Nash, “Non-Cooperative Games” [1951] 54(2) The An- nals of Mathematics 286-295.