Endogenous transport price and international R&D rivalry

The purpose of this paper is to consider the relationship between monopoly transport prices and an industry’s technology level of research and development (R&D). Although R&D efficiency is often considered a key factor to improve the performance of firms in an industry, we demonstrate that this standard view does not always hold in a trade model involving a monopoly transporter. In a one-way duopoly case, an exporter competes with a local firm in the local market but must pay a transport charge to the monopoly transporter to carry its product. We show that higher R&D efficiency may reduce the investments of an exporter. We further investigate a case of two-way trade comprising two symmetric countries. We also show that higher R&D efficiency may reduce the producers’ profit.