THE NEW ECONOMICS OF DISTANCE: LONG-TERM TRENDS IN INDEXES OF SPATIAL FRICTION

Distance-related costs have changed at different rates across categories of resource flows and across modes and media between 1960 and 1998. The cost of moving knowledge/information has dropped much faster than the costs of moving people or materials. The costs of processing and moving information have dropped by 98% and 92% respectively, in real terms since 1960. In addition, there are big differences in the rates of change within the real costs of moving people using different travel modes--just as big differences exist within the real costs of moving materials using different modes. For example, the real costs of moving materials by domestic rail and inland waterway have decreased by 58% and 42% in real terms, respectively, while inter-city trucking costs have not changed significantly in real terms since 1960. Thus, this paper suggests that the 'new economics of distance' is not about the disappearance of distance nor the demise of borders as factors in economics. Rather, 'the new economics of distance' is about the increasing role played by logistics management and the adjustment processes that are occurring as firms creatively seek to substitute between types of resources and between the modes and media for moving those resources.Industrial Organization,

Models of Organisational and Agency Choices for Passenger and Freight- Related Travel Choices: Notions of Inter-Activity and Influence

The study of traveller behaviour has in the main treated each agent in a decision-network as an independent decision maker conditioned typically (and exogenously) on the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of other agents and at best on a set of exogenous variables representing the (perceived ‘equilibrium’) influence of other agents. In many literatures it has long been recognised that agency interaction plays a (potentially) significant role in the actions of individuals. Examples at the household, community and business level abound. McFadden (2001a,b) recently stated that a high priority research agenda for choice modellers is the recognition of the role of social and psychological interactions between decision makers in the formation of preferences. Manski (2000) came to a similar conclusion and offered a plea for better data to assist in understanding the role of interactions between social agents (promoting the role of experimental choice data). While the interest in (endogenous) interactions between agents involved in passenger travel activity is generally neglected, the absence is particularly notable and of greater concern with the renewed interest in the study of (urban) freight travel activity where a supply chain of decision-makers have varying degrees of influence and power over the freight distribution task. This paper reviews the broad literature on interactive decision making with a specific focus on choices made by interactive agents and the role of individuals in networks. A number of modelling perspectives are presented that use well established discrete choice paradigms. We highlight the challenges in designing data collection paradigms that are comprehensive, relevant and comprehendible by participating agents and suggest an agenda for ongoing research

Geography and Development in Africa: Overview and Implications for Regional Cooperation

Geography causes African countries to experience a ?proximity gap?. To overcome this gap a ?big push? may be needed in infrastructure. The cross-border nature of such infrastructure requires regional cooperation in at least four issues: transport infrastructure, trade facilitation, decentralization and local economic development, and migration. Because incentives for regional cooperation in these aspects may not be symmetrical, commitments made may not be credible. Therefore, transport infrastructure at least should be bound in WTO rules on trade facilitation to provide third party enforcement. Incentives for cooperation could also be improved with transport corridor design and collective peer pressure by landlocked countries. Regional cooperation could be supported by the international community with aid, the assurance of full implementation and adherence to international law on the rights of landlocked countries to access to the sea, the extension of appropriate trade preferences to African regions and ensuring consistency of international agreements and trade preferences with current regional integration initiatives.Africa, poverty gaps, proximity, geographical economics, infrastructure, regional cooperation

A Systematic Literature Review on Innovative Technologies Adopted in Logistics Management

Many innovative technologies have been successfully adopted in logistics and supply chain management processes to increase efficiency, reduce costs or enhance communication. In recent years, considerable attention from both practitioners and academics has been focused on evaluating the impacts of innovative technologies adoption. However, the current body of literature on technology adoption, implementation and evaluation in logistics is quite fragmented; thus, an updated and structured overview of the scientific literature in this field might be useful. To this end, this work presents a systematic literature review (SLR) that aims to increase the understanding of the trend toward new technologies in logistics and identify the main research trends and gaps. The principal research trends that emerged from the SLR involve the technologies, their evolution over time and their relationships with the research methodologies. The main literature gaps concern integration and communication, technology-adoption processes and differences between inbound and outbound logistics

Supplying Cities from Abroad: The Geography of Inter-Urban Freight Flows

This article aims to identify the role of urban areas in freight systems. To achieve this goal, the article examines the nature and intensity of inter-urban freight flows in France. It draws on the results of a French survey that describes shipments sent by firms. It paints a simplified picture of the geography of freight flows with regard to the light they shed on economic interactions between urban centers. It shows that the pattern of inter-urban freight flows in France is hierarchical: large urban areas are supplied by smaller ones

Industrial clusters and economic integration : theoretic concepts and an application to the European Metropolitan Region Nuremberg

"Economic integration typically goes along with disintegration of production through outsourcing and offshoring (Feenstra 1998). As horizontal and vertical links between firms become more and more pronounced, value chains within regions are increasingly organized by production and innovation clusters. On the basis of a literature overview, we argue that in a world of economic integration clusters can be expected to play a prominent role. Therefore clusters can also be seen as a key element in the European Metropolitan Region concept. Within such an economic space, localisation economies according to the 'Marshallian trinity' (knowledge spillovers, input sharing and labour market pooling (Rosenthal/Strange 2003)) can be realized. The paper builds on a comprehensive company survey for the core of the European Metropolitan Region Nuremberg that includes customer-supplier relationships and various forms of cooperation. As indicated by numerous empirical studies, the characteristics of clusters differ substantially. In order to overcome the fuzziness of the concept we suggest a bottom-up methodology of cluster identification using a set of qualitative and quantitative indicators. Given that many kinds of barriers to interregional and international trade are becoming less and less important and transport cost are falling, modern production clusters tend to have a higher geographical extension than traditional ones. We therefore raise the question of whether clustering is relevant for economic integration on the regional, national and supra-national level." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))Stadtregion, regionales Cluster, Standort, Industrieregion, Regionalökonomie, zwischenbetriebliche Kooperation, Zulieferer, Wirtschaftsstruktur, regionales Netzwerk, Nürnberg, Oberfranken, Mittelfranken, Franken, Bayern

Transport and Logistics in a globalizing world. A focus on Italy.

open1Mariotti, IlariaMariotti, Ilari

The logistics and transportation problems of Latin American integration efforts : the Andean Pact : a case of study

Logistics and transportation infrastructures are recognized as having a significant impact on making a regional integration scheme work as intended. The success of the European Community in bringing countries together is thought to have been achievable due to their integrated logistics and transportation infrastructures. Unfortunately, this is not the case for Latin American countries. Although many regional agreements have been in place for many years, their limited success in accomplishing the goals of integration is attributed in part to the lack of a regional logistics and transportationnetwork.To understand to what extent the logistics and transportation infrastructure has affected the integration of Latin American countries during the last thirty years, the case of the Andean Community is used in this study. The Andean Community is not a perfect union. For example, its geographical settings lack some of the economic advantages of other, more natural integration areas. This is one of the many reasons why its intraregional trade has historically been so low. Only in the last few years has significant growth in the infra-Andean trade been accomplished.The apparent lack of roads and the poor condition of the country infrastructure does not appear in this study have played a negative role in integration. As demonstrated in this study, the countries have used their roads, vehicles, vessels, and all natural means of transportation (rivers, lakes, and natural passes) to move cargo from one country to another.This study has found that the archaic regulatory environment affects the efficient physical movement of goods more than the length or quality of the roads.As we find through the analysis of the patterns of intra-Andean trade, the Andean Group has more than doubled its regional trade since the beginnings of the Nineties. This Increase on trade is a consequence of the new trade liberalization policies, bilateral trade agreements and new orientation toward promoting growth through exports.Further study is suggested in the areas of the impact of national legislation on regional trade and transportation, the role played by freight forwarders and multinational companies, and the role of multimodal transportation in the region

Sustainable Freight Transport

This Special Issue of Sustainability reports on recent research aiming to make the freight transport sector more sustainable. The sector faces significant challenges in different domains of sustainability, including the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the management of health and safety impacts. In particular, the intention to decarbonise the sector’s activities has led to a strong increase in research efforts—this is also the main focus of the Special Issue. Sustainable freight transport operations represent a significant challenge with multiple technical, operational, and political aspects. The design, testing, and implementation of interventions require multi-disciplinary, multi-country research. Promising interventions are not limited to introducing new transport technologies, but also include changes in framework conditions for transport, in terms of production and logistics processes. Due to the uncertainty of impacts, the number of stakeholders, and the difficulty of optimizing across actors, understanding the impacts of these measures is not a trivial problem. Therefore, research is not only needed on the design and evaluation of individual interventions, but also on the approach of their joint deployment through a concerted public/private programme. This Special Issue addresses both dimensions, in two distinct groups of papers—the programming of interventions and the individual sustainability measures themselves