民族系物流企業の勃興

現在中国において物流サービスを提供している企業は約１万社あるとされる。筆者の見るところ、これら企業には大きく分けて三つのタイプがある。第一は外資系企業で、改革・開放の初期にはフォワーダー（貨物運送代理業者）が参入し、やがて各種の物流合弁企業が設立された。第二は旧来の運輸・倉庫企業、卸売り企業から発展したもので、既存設備や顧客を基礎に本格的物流企業への脱皮を図っている。第三が新しいビジネスモデルで参入したベンチャー系企業である。本稿では、第三の企業を紹介しつつ、激化する市場競争の中で進む業界再編の行方について展望を試みる。

Transport costs, distance, and time : evidence from the Japanese Census of Logistics

Geographic distance is a standard proxy for transport costs under the simple assumption that freight fees increase monotonically over space. Using the Japanese Census of Logistics, this paper examines the extent to which transport distance and time affect freight costs across shipping modes, commodity groups, and prefecture pairs. The results show substantial heterogeneity in transport costs and time across shipping modes. Consistent with an iceberg formulation of transport costs, distance has a significantly positive effect on freight costs by air transportation. However, I find the puzzling results that business enterprises are likely to pay more for short-distance shipments by truck, ship, and railroad transportation. As a plausible explanation, I discuss aggregation bias arising from freight-specific premiums for timely, frequent, and small-batch shipments.

Geographical simulation analysis for logistics enhancement in Asia

This paper presents a simulation of the reduction of several components in trade cost for Asia and examines its impact on the economy. Our simulation model based on the new economic geography embraces seven sectors, including manufacturing and non-manufacturing sectors, and 1,715 regions in 18 countries/economies in Asia, in addition to the two economies of the US and the European Union. The geographical course of transactions among regions is modeled as determined based on firms’ modal choice. The model also includes estimates of some border cost measures such as tariff rates, non-tariff barriers, other border clearance costs, transshipment costs and so on. Our simulation analysis for Asia includes several scenarios involving the improvement/development of routes and the reduction of the above-mentioned border cost. We have shown that the contribution of physical and non-physical infrastructure improvements conducted together is larger than the sum of the contribution by each when conducted independently.

Transport modal choice by multinational firms : firm-level evidence from Southeast Asia

We examine transport modal decision by multinational firms to shed light on the role of freight logistics in multinational activity. Using a firm-level survey in Southeast Asia, we show that foreign ownership has a significantly positive and quantitatively large impact on the likelihood that air/sea transportation is chosen relative to truck shipping. This result is robust to the shipping distance, cross-border freight, and transport infrastructure. Both foreign-owned exporters and importers also tend to use air/sea transportation. Thus, our analysis presents a new distinction between multinational and domestic firms in their decision over transport modes.