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Ice(berg) Transport Costs

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  • Maarten Bosker
  • Eltjo Buringh

Abstract

Iceberg transport costs are a key ingredient of modern trade and economic geography models. Using detailed information on Boston’s nineteenth-century global ice trade, we show that the cost of shipping the only good that truly melts in transit is not well-proxied by this assumption. Additive cost components account for the largest part of per unit ice(berg) transport costs in practice. Moreover, the physics of the melt process and the practice of insulating the ice in transit meant that shipping ice is subject to economies of scale. This finding supports, from an unexpected historical angle, recent efforts to incorporate more realistic features of the transportation sector in trade and economic geography models.

Suggested Citation

  • Maarten Bosker & Eltjo Buringh, 2020. "Ice(berg) Transport Costs," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 130(629), pages 1262-1287.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:econjl:v:130:y:2020:i:629:p:1262-1287.
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ej/ueaa023
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    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. What’s an “iceberg commuting cost”?
      by jdingel in Trade Diversion on 2019-10-28 18:14:15

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    Cited by:

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    2. Ma, Meilin & Delgado, Michael S. & Wang, H. Holly, 2024. "Risk, arbitrage, and spatial price relationships: Insights from China's hog market under the African Swine Fever," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    3. Guillaume Daudin & Jérôme Héricourt & Lise Patureau, 2022. "International transport costs: new findings from modeling additive costs [Inventories, lumpy trade, and large devaluations]," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 22(5), pages 989-1044.
    4. Ting Ding & Wenzhong Zhu & Ming Zhao, 2022. "Does Cross-Border Logistics Performance Contribute to Export Competitiveness? Evidence from China Based on the Iceberg Transport Cost Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(1), pages 1-17, December.
    5. repec:ptu:bdpart:r202401 is not listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    iceberg transport costs; nineteenth-century Boston ice trade; economies of scale;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F10 - International Economics - - Trade - - - General
    • N70 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services - - - General, International, or Comparative
    • N51 - Economic History - - Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment and Extractive Industries - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913

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