Market Conditions and Retirement of Physical Capital: Evidence fron Oil Tankers

The endogeneity of capital retirements is studied for the particular case of oil tankers from 1979--1989. A model is estimated to examine the effect of changes in market conditions on the price and scrappage of tankers. Energy price rises had a major impact on the value of ships and on which ships were scrapped. A simple model is able to account for many features of the market. We use the information implicit in second-hand prices to ease the computational burden for the model that is estimated.