There are consequences too for academic research. The spread
between base rates and surcharges revealed in this paper, suggests
that the academic community must use extreme caution in
employing ‘ocean freight rates’. There must be much more clarity
in defining the composition of rates employed in research. Because
many of the surcharges are applied unequally between trades, it
brings into question the appropriateness of many explanatory variables
traditionally used in quantitative analyses.