Abstract:

Trade within and between countries can take place by alternative transport modes. Economic and logistical complexity is fostering multimodality as well as transport-mode competition. The international trade literature has given little attention to this issue. The aim of this paper is to analyze transport-mode competition in inter-provincial deliveries within Spain. To this end, we use a novel dataset with fifty inter-provincial, industry-specific flows by four transport modes (road, train, ship and aircraft). We then feed this dataset into various specifications of a gravity model that incorporates cross-sectional dependence attributable to unobservable factors directly associated with implicit and explicit transport-mode competition schemes. In considering alternative distance segments, we also test for competition effects between road and the other three modes.