Kazuhiko Ishiguro

Identification and Elimination of Barriers in the Operations and Management of Maritime Transportation

Transportation-related costs both at ports and for inland transportation are very high, which is essentially caused by the high cost of labor and construction of infrastructure. This condition, however, is also caused by protectionist policies in the domestic transportation field. This chapter discusses and identifies barriers in the operation and management of maritime and multimodal transportation. The effect of the removal of barriers is calculated by applying a Spatial Computable General Equilibrium (SCGE) model that includes behavior of the transportation sector. The results of case studies show that a 10% reduction of import or export costs produces a 1% increase in total trade.

DEVELOPMENT OF OCEAN CARRIERS' BEHAVIOUR MODEL FOCUSING ON THEIR 'COST AND TARIFF' BASED ON THE SPATIAL GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM

Spatial computable general equilibrium (SCGE) theory has been applied to an international trade model to evaluate tariff and fiscal policies of a country. Those models can not be applied for the evaluation of transport policies such as port development and tax/subsidy policy against transportation sectors, since they do not deal with ocean freight and ocean carriers explicitly in the model. Ocean freight often varies with the changes of competitive conditions and/or demand/ supply balances in the short run, while it should reflect the actual expenditure of the carriers in the long run. The model proposed here considers the profit maximization behaviour of ocean carriers, and deals with ocean freight explicitly. The model is applied to four major economic regions; Japan, USA, EU and Asia. A multi-level function composed of the Cobb-Douglas function is adopted to produce reliable parameters of the production function for many industries.

AN ANALYSIS OF WHOLESALERS' ACTIVITY AND THEIR HISTORICAL TREND IN JAPAN

交通量予測のための将来の物流量の把握・予測, また交通問題解決のための物流の合理化が現在大きな課題となっている. 生産から消費に至る物流においてその中心にいるのは卸売業であるにもかかわらず, 従来その卸売物流の実態についてはほとんど解明されていない. そこで本研究では地域間の卸売物流の階層構造, 最近10年間での卸売業の集積の変化と更にその変化の著しい品目についての変化理由をそれぞれ物流の観点で考察した. その結果, 品目別の卸売業の都道府県単位での地域間階層構造, 商物分離, 消費地への立地指向, 食料品における小売業の成長をそれぞれ物流ベースから明らかにできた.