Competition and horizontal integration in maritime freight transport

Óscar Álvarez-SanJaime, Pedro Cantos-Sánchez, Rafael Moner-Colonques and José Sempere-Monerris
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Óscar Álvarez San-Jaime ()

Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 2013, vol. 51, issue C, 67-81

Abstract: This paper models competition for freight transport between the road and maritime sectors. Operators offer differentiated services and there are economies of scale in the oligopolistic shipping line sector. Two types of integration between shipping lines are considered: in one of them the liners production processes remain separate (like in an alliance); in another economies of scale are further exploited. Typically maritime freight post-merger goes down. However, it may increase if the merger exploits further economies of scale, they are important and transport services are sufficiently differentiated. An empirical application to the routes Valencia–Antwerp and Valencia–Genoa is undertaken to confirm the predictions of the model. It is shown that, for both types of merger, user surplus increases when transport services are weakly differentiated and economies of scale are sufficiently small. These conditions also guarantee that a merger is socially beneficial.

Keywords: Freight transport; Shipping lines; Horizontal integration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Competition and horizontal integration in maritime freight transport (2013)
Working Paper: Competition and horizontal integration in maritime freight transport (2010)
Working Paper: Competition and horizontal integration in maritime freight transport (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:transe:v:51:y:2013:i:c:p:67-81

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DOI: 10.1016/j.tre.2012.12.008

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