Authors
Morosanova A.
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Degree
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The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Lomonosov Moscow State University, Faculty of economics |
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E-mail
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morosanova-a@ranepa.ru |
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Location
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Moscow |
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Articles
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Digital transformation in transport: development opportunities and risks of restricting competitionDigital transformation affects all areas of the economy either implementing IT-technologies or just
enjoying their spillovers. Compared to other transportation spheres, freight industry is a subject to
significant competition effects. On the one hand, these effects stem from the fact that large operators
can provide integrated services and carry out multimodal transportation and door-to-door delivery.
On the other hand, some delivery companies tend to implement territory “zoning” strategies and
specialize on the certain cargo type which may lead to cornering the market. Delivery companies in
developed countries have already outperformed Russian ones in digital technologies implementation:
their quality of railways and carriages, air transportation services and trucking logistics is much
higher. The main obstacles of digital technologies implementation in cargo transportation industries
include the need significant investments (which especially affects small companies’ performance),
lack of digital aspects in the industrial policy, lobbying of large cargo companies. Fast penetration of
digital technologies also causes several competitive risks. There exists a tendency towards market
consolidation which is especially important in terms of the emergence of large multimodal transport
companies, who may exploit its dominant position to eliminate competition. Moreover, nowadays
there exist several freight platforms entrusting transportation duties to the actual carrier companies
by means of vehicle-cargo matching. The business model when a platform does not own freight
transport is new phenomenon for the freight industry as well as for the regulators. That is why the
regulators need to take into account new digital trends in freight industry and develop their own
services for gathering reliable data to keep an ear to the ground in promoting competition in the
transportation sphere.
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