The Bill of Lading in an Era of Electronic Commerce: Legal Developments and the Reform Options for Nigeria

One of the pervasive effects of the advancement in information and communication technology is a radical shift in the means of conducting business transactions. With the digitalization of the global economy, business transactions are increasingly conducted in an electronic medium. The bill of lading, as the most important ocean transport document, has, in response to the needs of the times, passed through many phases of development to its present electronic nature. The problem however, is adapting the challenges of electronic commerce to the old contractual legal order. For the bill of lading, the challenge is the replication of all its traditional functions in electronic settings. Achieving this requires well-established electronic and legal infrastructure. This thesis evaluates the present electronic bill of lading regime in Nigeria with particular reference to the positions in Canada and the United Kingdom and discusses the reform options open to Nigeria in addressing these challenges

Bundling Strategies in Global Supply Chains

The development of logistics has offered a wide range of new business opportunities for transport operators. Shipping lines have been taking advantage of these opportunities and have expanded their business scope beyond the movement of cargo, to include, for example, coordination among transport modes, route rationalisation and even value added logistics services. Carriers offer today transportation as part of integrated global supply chain solutions in an attempt to provide a better service to their customers as well as improve their bottom lines. This appears to be a winning strategy since an increasing number of industry players are investing in logistics operations and infrastructure. The offering of products and services jointly as a package or bundle is a common marketing strategy in a variety of industries and also appears to be a successful strategy for enhancing shipping lines’ competitiveness and profitability. Only limited research is available though to better understand under what conditions such bundled sales are possible; what attitude shippers show towards this industry trend; how bundling strategies could be developed optimally; and how they could be priced. This thesis is a contribution to research in this area and provides an analysis of the viability and the benefits of bundling strategies in the container industry, and specifically with reference to the joint provision of ocean transportation and other logistics services

Technological Changes in the Transportation Sector--Effects on U.S. Food and Agricultural Trade: A Proceedings

ERS sponsored a workshop, Technological and Structural Change in the Transportation Sector: Effects on U.S. Food and Agricultural Trade, March 17-18, 1999, in Washington, DC. The program's objectives were to raise awareness within ERS about the role and importance of transportation in U.S. food and agricultural trade and to discuss the need of an agency research agenda in this area. More than 60 people attended. Bob Thompson of the World Bank and Jeffrey Frankel of the Brookings Institution led with discussions about the role of transportation in the global food system and the importance of integrating geography and transportation in analysis of international trade. Other panels dealt with transportation technology, past and future, the changing policy environment for ocean shipping, logistical and technological developments aiding exports of specific commodities, including the use of supply chain management. Representatives of the Agricultural Marketing Service discussed the availability of transportation cost data, and the availability of other shipping data was discussed by representatives of the PIERS database, a product of the Journal of Commerce. Two ERS research projects were summarized, one using GTAP and another applying the gravity model to estimate the extent to which distance is less of an inhibiting factor in exporting certain U.S. agricultural exports. The administrator of the Agricultural Marketing Service, the ERS associate administrator, and representatives of the Transportation Research Board, the USDA's World Board, and the Farm Foundation discussed potential ways ERS could include the transportation variable in its research. The program was cosponsored by the Farm Foundation and World Perspectives, Inc.transportation, distance, technology, agricultural trade, United States, Public Economics, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Less-than-truckload Dynamic Pricing Model in Physical Internet

International audienceThis paper investigates a decision-making problem consisting of less-than-truckload dynamic pricing (LTLDP) under Physical Internet (PI). PI can be seen as the interconnection of logistics networks via open PI-hubs, which can be considered as spot freight markets where LTL requests of different volume/destination continuously arrive over time for a short-stay. Carriers can bid for the requests by using short-term contract. This paper proposes a dynamic pricing model to optimise carrier’s bid price to maximise his expected profits. Three influencing factors are investigated: requests quantity, carrier’s capacity and cost. The results provide useful guidelines to carriers on pricing decisions in PI-hub

WHERE STEEL MEETS THE TRACK: EXAMINING THE FUNCTIONALITY OF REGULATORY POLICY IN THE CANADIAN GRAIN TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM

The last century has been an era of incredible advancements in grain production for Canada’s agricultural sector. A large portion of the country’s annual grain production is exported around the globe to a wide variety of international destinations. However, many of these exports originate from Western Canada – a fertile but land-locked portion of the country. This has left the grain handling and transportation system (GHTS) in Western Canada heavily reliant on rail transportation as a means of efficiently and cost-effectively moving product to tide water. With rapid modernization continuing to occur in both the production and grain handling sectors of the industry, it is important that the government policies regulating the transportation of Canadian grain by rail continue to best serve all the players involved in the face of a changing industry landscape. The thesis explores three main policy measures currently used by the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) to regulate movements of grain by rail in Western Canada. These include the Maximum Revenue Entitlement (MRE), interswitching provisions, and Final Offer Arbitration (FOA). Discussion of these measures is augmented by the presentation of a game theory model to investigate current topics of debate related to interswitching regulations. The model is used to support an argument grounded in contestable market theory that using interswitching activity as a means of measuring the usefulness of interswitching provisions might be a poor metric. The model demonstrates that when a shipper’s ability to call for an interswitch order is viewed by a railway as a viable threat, competitive outcomes can be achieved without an interswitch movement occurring. Furthermore, the thesis also examines data obtained through experiments conducted with the Canadian Hub for Applied and Social Research (CHASR) to investigate aspects of the current FOA framework that could be optimized. A two-player game was designed and conducted with the help of 50 participants to investigate the effects of information asymmetry and variance in the length of FOA arbitrator rulings. Our findings underline the importance of minimizing information asymmetry amongst shippers and railways participating in the FOA process to ensure that the policy achieves its intended outcomes. Furthermore, trends in the data suggest that lengthening the period of time that an arbitrator’s ruling is enforced may encourage even less extreme offers from the parties participating in the FOA process. The thesis is intended as a means of better understanding the strengths and deficiencies of the current regulatory measures in place so that the industry is prepared for continued growth and advancement in the century ahead