Shipping Alliances' Formation Based on Evolutionary Game Theory

It is a long time from the appearance of international shipping alliance to the present situation which several stable alliances coexist, and it has experienced ceaseless adjustment. According to Darwinism, this process is a kind of "survival of the fittest" in the global shipping market. But from another point of view, it's the result of game theory where every shipping company plays with others in microcosmic market. This paper explains how so many shipping companies arrives at several stable alliances when market situation changes gradually based on the evolutionary game theory. After the introduction of shipping market's competitive history and evolutionary game theory, an evolutionary game theory model of shipping alliance's development is established. In the following part, the replicator dynamics equation's 3 fixed points are deduced, and the evolutionary stable strategy(ESS) of the model is found out. At last, some forecasts about shipping alliances' development are put forward.