The author has set two goals for this book: “first to describe and analyse the shipping conference system with an emphasis on the different attitudes which the U.S., India, Australia, and the U.K. have toward the regulation of shipping conferences. Second, to concentrate on the two international codes for conferences that were adopted in the last decade”. The first 11 chapters of the book are historical and descriptive. They begin with a general overview of seaborne transportation and explanations of the operation of shipping conferences, cost structures, loyalty agreements, passenger conferences, shippers’ councils, containerization, international institutional developments, the code of practices for conferences adopted in 1971 by the Committee of European and Japanese National Shipowners Association (CENSA), the UNCTAD Code of Conduct for Liner Conferences adopted in 1974, and the U.S. and EEC attitudes towards these international codes. An entire chapter is devoted to “Monopolistic Aspects of the Conference System”. The book ends with a chapter recommending seven steps that could provide a compromise to the present conflicting national and international viewpoints. Two appendices reprint the UNCTAD and CENSA codes. There is a selected bibliography. Unfortunately, there is no index but most chapters are footnoted to publicly available materials.

The author’s hope is that his study will be useful in finding a compromise between the different approaches to shipping conferences. Such a compromise, he believes, should take into consideration the special needs of developing countries, the principle of freedom of contracts and the benefits of the comparative advantages of free maritime transportation.

The author accurately portrays the views of the different participants in the debate. He is critical of the American approach, which involves an insistence on competition and equal access to conferences. He discusses at some length various scenarios relating to past and future performance of shipping conferences in various competitive settings. Unfortunately, this discussion is not supported by economic data but is a “hypothesis based on analysis of past developments, broad assumptions and presuppositions”. For example, the author states that the prohibition of conferences would expose the industry to ruinous competition which would result in the survival of a few large shipowners and the demise of orderly service. This conclusion seems to be inconsistent with the author’s earlier statements that conferences are unable to monopolize particular routes because they lack the right to control access to the routes and to preserve exclusivity on the routes. Conferences can exclude carriers from their organizations but they cannot prevent them from carrying out business