IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/kan/wpaper/200705.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Regional Economies of Scale in Transportation and Regional Welfare

Author

Listed:
  • Alexandre Skiba

    (Department of Economics, The University of Kansas)

Abstract

A discriminatory tariff can be welfare superior to free trade in the presence of regional economies of scale. This is because a tariff on non-regional trade concentrates trade within a region, lowering the cost of transportation, so that the gains from economies of scale can theoretically offset the losses from the tariff. To complement the theoretical point I estimate the relation between transportation cost and regional volume of trade. The estimates suggest that a 10% increase in the volume of trade brings about 2.5% reduction in transportation cost in the long run.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexandre Skiba, 2007. "Regional Economies of Scale in Transportation and Regional Welfare," WORKING PAPERS SERIES IN THEORETICAL AND APPLIED ECONOMICS 200705, University of Kansas, Department of Economics, revised Sep 2007.
    • Handle: RePEc:kan:wpaper:200705
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www2.ku.edu/~kuwpaper/2007Papers/200705.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David L. Hummels & Georg Schaur, 2013. "Time as a Trade Barrier," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(7), pages 2935-2959, December.
    2. Antonio Spilimbergo & Ernesto Stein, 1998. "The Welfare Implications of Trading Blocs among Countries with Different Endowments," NBER Chapters, in: The Regionalization of the World Economy, pages 121-152, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Casas, Fran?ois R. & Choi, E. Kwan, 1990. "Transport Innovation and Welfare Under Variable Returns to Scale," Staff General Research Papers Archive 278, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    4. Jeffrey A. Frankel & Ernesto Stein & Shang-Jin Wei, 1998. "Continental Trading Blocs: Are They Natural or Supernatural?," NBER Chapters, in: The Regionalization of the World Economy, pages 91-120, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Jacek Cukrowski & Manfred M. Fischer, 2000. "Theory of Comparative Advantage: Do Transportation Costs Matter?," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(2), pages 311-322, May.
    6. Jeffrey A. Frankel, 1998. "The Regionalization of the World Economy," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number fran98-1, July.
    7. Didier Laussel & Raymond Riezman, 2006. "Fixed Transport Costs and International Trade," CESifo Working Paper Series 1764, CESifo.
    8. Mori, Tomoya & Nishikimi, Koji, 2002. "Economies of transport density and industrial agglomeration," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 167-200, March.
    9. Hummels, David, 2001. "Time As A Trade Barrier," Working papers 28701, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fabien Candau & Florent Deisting & Julie Schlick, 2017. "How Income and Crowding Effects Influence the World Market for French Wines," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(5), pages 963-977, May.
    2. Hummels, David & Lugovskyy, Volodymyr & Skiba, Alexandre, 2009. "The trade reducing effects of market power in international shipping," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(1), pages 84-97, May.
    3. Rancourt, Marie-Ève & Bellavance, François & Goentzel, Jarrod, 2014. "Market analysis and transportation procurement for food aid in Ethiopia," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 198-219.
    4. Fabien Candau & Florent Deisting & Julie Schlick, 2017. "How Income and Crowding Effects Influence the World Market for French Wines," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(5), pages 963-977, May.
    5. Asturias, Jose, 2020. "Endogenous transportation costs," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    6. Behrens, Kristian & Picard, Pierre M., 2011. "Transportation, freight rates, and economic geography," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 280-291.
    7. Joern Kleinert & Julia Spies, 2011. "Endogenous Transport Costs in International Trade," IAW Discussion Papers 74, Institut für Angewandte Wirtschaftsforschung (IAW).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Céline Carrere, 2011. "Regional Agreements and Welfare in the South: When Scale Economies in Transport Matter," CERDI Working papers halshs-00556992, HAL.
    2. James E. Anderson & Eric van Wincoop, 2004. "Trade Costs," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(3), pages 691-751, September.
    3. Hausman, Warren H. & Lee, Hau L. & Subramanian, Uma, 2005. "Global logistics indicators, supply chain metrics, and bilateral trade patterns," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3773, The World Bank.
    4. Mr. Rikhil Bhavnani & Ms. Natalia T. Tamirisa & Mr. Arvind Subramanian & Mr. David T. Coe, 2002. "The Missing Globalization Puzzle," IMF Working Papers 2002/171, International Monetary Fund.
    5. Noblet, Sandrine & Belgodere, Antoine, 2010. "Coordination cost and the distance puzzle," MPRA Paper 27502, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Ashutosh Kar & Pratyay Ranjan Datta, 2020. "Logistics Cost Dynamics in International Business: A Causal Approach," Foreign Trade Review, , vol. 55(4), pages 478-495, November.
    7. Ikumo Isono, 2011. "Economic Integration and the Expansion of Trade and Transport Networks," Chapters, in: Masahisa Fujita & Ikuo Kuroiwa & Satoru Kumagai (ed.), The Economics of East Asian Integration, chapter 13, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Baier, Scott L. & Bergstrand, Jeffrey H., 2004. "Economic determinants of free trade agreements," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 29-63, October.
    9. Céline CARRERE, 2007. "Regional Agreements and Welfare in the South: When Scale Economies in Transport Matter," Working Papers 200726, CERDI.
    10. Peter Egger & Michael Pfaffermayr, 2004. "Foreign Direct Investment and European Integration in the 1990s," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(1), pages 99-110, January.
    11. Demet Yilmazkuday & Hakan Yilmazkuday, 2017. "The role of direct flights in trade costs," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 153(2), pages 249-270, May.
    12. Festus Ebo Turkson, 2012. "Trade Agreements and Bilateral Trade in Sub-Saharan Africa: Estimating the Trade Effects of the EU-ACP PTA and RTAs," Discussion Papers 12/07, University of Nottingham, CREDIT.
    13. Christian Volpe Martincus, 2016. "Out of the Border Labyrinth: An Assessment of Trade Facilitation Initiatives in Latin America and the Caribbean," IDB Publications (Books), Inter-American Development Bank, number 96856, February.
    14. Miren Lafourcade & Jacques-François Thisse, 2011. "New Economic Geography: The Role of Transport Costs," Chapters, in: André de Palma & Robin Lindsey & Emile Quinet & Roger Vickerman (ed.), A Handbook of Transport Economics, chapter 4, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    15. Laura Márquez-Ramos & Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso & Celestino Suárez-Burguet, 2011. "Determinants of Deep Integration: Examining Socio-political Factors," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 479-500, July.
    16. Pedro Albarran & Raquel Carrasco & Adelheid Holl, 2013. "Domestic transport infrastructure and firms’ export market participation," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 40(4), pages 879-898, May.
    17. de Soyres, François & Mulabdic, Alen & Ruta, Michele, 2020. "Common transport infrastructure: A quantitative model and estimates from the Belt and Road Initiative," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    18. Lücke, Matthias & Rothert, Jacek, 2006. "Central Asia's comparative advantage in international trade," Kiel Economic Policy Papers 6, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    19. Chen, Natalie & Novy, Dennis, 2008. "International Trade Integration: A Disaggregated Approach," CEPR Discussion Papers 7103, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. Martina Lawless, 2010. "Deconstructing gravity: trade costs and extensive and intensive margins," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 43(4), pages 1149-1172, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    regional economies of scale; transportation costs; preferential trade agreements; regional welfare;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F10 - International Economics - - Trade - - - General
    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kan:wpaper:200705. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Professor Zongwu Cai (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deuksus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.