Ice(berg) transport costs

Maarten Bosker*, Eltjo Buringh

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

11 Citations (Scopus)
9 Downloads (Pure)

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.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1262-1287
Number of pages26
JournalThe Economic Journal
Volume130
Issue number629
Early online date3 Mar 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2020

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© 2020 Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

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