Maritime transport has been historically susceptible to piracy. While broad assessments suggest the impact of modern … piracy causes large economic losses, the literature lacks quantification of the magnitude of the costs and the behavioral … responses that underpin them. Here, we combine theory and a unique geospatial dataset combining more than 25 million shipping …

Shipping was central to the rise of the Atlantic economies, but an extremely hazardous activity: in the 1780s, roughly … shipping technology was stagnant before iron steamships, in this paper we demonstrate that between the 1780s and 1820s, a … safety revolution occurred that saw shipping losses and insurance rates on oceanic routes almost halved thanks to steady …