EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

SPECIFIC VS GENERIC GOODS:IMPLICATIONS FOR TRANSPORT DEMAND ANALYSIS

Jérôme Massiani, Romeo Danielis () and Edoardo Marcucci ()

Articles, 2009, vol. 36, issue 3

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the theoretical and empirical relevance of the distinction between generic goods and specific goods for the understanding of freight transportation demand. Specific goods are made for a single customer while generic goods are produced irrespective of which final customer will buy them. Theoretically, the distinction lays on a different relationship with time, based, for specific goods, on the trade-off between transport duration and cost and, for generic goods, on optimal stock. We claim that the distinction might affect shippers’ valuation of freight transport attributes such as value of time, value of transport time reliability and value of the risk of loss and damages. Since neither the sign nor the size of the effect can be established on pure theoretical grounds, an empirical analysis is carried out to test whether shippers value freight service attributes differently for the two types of goods. It is found that the value of transport time is significantly larger for generic than for specific goods.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:jte:journl:2009:3:36:4

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Articles from International Journal of Transport Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alessio Tei ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:jte:journl:2009:3:36:4