Multi-part pricing in the US Less-than-Truckload Motor Carrier Industry

Angela Yan Du and Steven T. Buccola

Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, 2020, vol. 54, issue 3, 199--218

Abstract: Less-than-truckload motor carriers, which handle goods of unrelated customers, generally charge separately for base, fuelling, and accessory services. We develop and estimate a monopolistically competitive model of these multi-part structures — particularly base and fuelling — allowing joint inference about price strategy and technology. We find that although base and fuelling are priced separately, the services themselves are technologically partly joint. Nevertheless, base charges defray the more liquid inputs, where scale returns are constant — while fuelling charges tend to cover the carrier’s scarcer resources, where scale returns are decreasing. Unsurprisingly then, market power is achieved primarily in the prices charged to fuelling.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/27106104

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tpe:jtecpo:2020:54:3:199--218

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Transport Economics and Policy is currently edited by B T Bayliss, S A Morrison, A Smith and D Graham

More articles in Journal of Transport Economics and Policy from University of Bath
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().