Abstract

International audience; Recent research on maritime ports hinterlands points out the relevance of mass ground transport modes such as barge transport for enormous flows of containers to and from harbours, especially when a maritime port is located at the mouth of a river. Though, the modal share of container barge transport in French maritime ports (9% of TEU in Le Havre and 5% in Marseille in 2007) is significantly lower than elsewhere (32% in Rotterdam and 33% in Antwerp). Some reports and studies explain the viscosity of container barge transport flows as a result of several factors, generally concentrated around the seaport community. In continuation of previous seminal works, this paper adopts a neo-institutional approach (Williamson, 1985; 1996) of container barge transport to understand how the factors generating this viscosity are managed. Section 2 describes the characteristics of the transaction of container barge transport. Section 3 is devoted to its attributes (asset specificity, frequency, uncertainty). According to Williamson’s (1996) remediableness criterion, the observed governance structure of a given transaction is presumed efficient and aligned to its attributes. Thus, Section 4 deals with observed governance structures of container barge transport chains with a focus on Le Havre, main French container seaport and shows how agents try to limit opportunism in ex-post haggling over quasi-rents or under-investments. Implementation of a new institutional environment to modify governance structures is analysed, and a comparison with currently implemented governance structures observed in Rhine is made. Finally, Section 5 suggests ways of dealing with the remaining coordination problems impeding the development of container barge transport in France.

Abstract

Economic theory claims that contracts renegotiation prevents from reaching the informationally constrained efficient solution that could have been obtained under full commitment. Assessing the cost of renegotiation compared to the full commitment scenario still remains an open issue from an empirical viewpoint. To address this question, we fit a structural principal-agent model with renegotiation on a set of contracts for urban transport services. The model captures two important features of the industry. First, only two types of contracts are used in practice (fixed-price and cost-plus). Second, subsidies are greater when a cost-plus contract was signed earlier on than following a fixed-price contract. We then compare a scenario with renegotiation and a hypothetical situation with full commitment. We conclude that the welfare gains from improving commitment would be significant but would accrue mostly to operators. Document type: Preprint

Abstract

This paper appears also as Serie: Working paper series in economics ; No. 61, September 2014. ISSN 2190-9806; International audience; We analyse the potential for shifting freight transports to the railways in Western and Central Europe. This potential arises for large and concentrated freight flows over long distances of about 300 km or more. However, we show that there are only few such freight flows in Europe, and that they are concentrated or connected to the central European population centers, sometimes called the "Blue Banana". As a consequence, the European railway freight corridors according to EU Regulation 913/2010 should be divided into two distinct groups: first tier and second tier corridors. Substantial innovations should be introduced on the first tier corridors first, in order to increase efficiency and reduce noise. This refers to core innovations for rolling stock like the introduction of automatic couplings, electronic or electro-pneumatic brakes, and modern bogies.