Intercontinental Services Research Articles

Intercontinental Liner Shipping Service Design

Intercontinental liner container shipping service connects trades between different continents in the global logistic system. This paper proposes a single intercontinental service design problem that aims to jointly determine the optimal serviced ports from a set of candidate ports, the port rotation, the ship sailing speed on each voyage between adjacent serviced ports and the number of containers transported for each type of shipping demand. A mixed integer linear programming model is formulated for the proposed problem based on mild assumptions to maximize the service profit, which is calculated as the freight revenue minus the total operating cost that includes port stay cost, container handling cost, bunker consumption cost, and other ship operating costs. The formulated model is also able to produce a service route with a more general topological structure than the simple cycle or butterfly cycle routes considered in most current studies. In view of the unique features of the model, a tailored and exact branch-and-cut algorithm is developed based on Benders decomposition to expedite the model solution. Numerical experiments demonstrate the efficiency of the developed branch-and-cut algorithm and show the applicability of the proposed model for designing the intercontinental liner shipping services. The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2018.0831 .

The Australian Conference of Economists at 40: The State It’s In

It was 1970. It was the Age of Aquarius. The Boeing 747 was introduced into intercontinental service. In Australia, the Federal Treasurer, Les Bury, began to notice that inflation and unemployment were rising simultaneously. And Australian students began studying economics using a localised adaptation of Samuelson's classic textbook.

Intra-Continental and Intercontinental Service Trade in the Travel and Tourism Industry

This study investigates the features and determinants of the international travel and tourism service trade between the European, Asian and North American markets from 2000 to 2005. The evolution of bilateral service trade in each of these markets indicates that travel and tourism within continents plays an important role in 36 countries. The study first employs the Breusch–Pagan LM (Lagrange multiplier) test, the Hausman test and the Hausman–Taylor over-identification test to choose the appropriate empirical method. The empirical results reveal that the supply–pull effect from parent countries (the economic size of tourist origins) plays an important role in improving the tourism service exports of the various destinations. In addition, the home countries' exports of travel services are inelastic to the appreciation of their own currencies. Moreover, distribution infrastructures and the adjacency and RTA (ASEAN) dummies are found to have significantly positive contributions in terms of enhancing Asian tourism service exports, whereas the European Union (EU) and NAFTA discourage European and North American tourism exports, respectively.

The Geography of Deregulation in the European Aviation Market

The deregulation of US aviation since 1978 has resulted in the reconfiguration of airlines’ route networks, and in the concentration of traffic on a small number of central airports or ‘hubs’. This paper investigates whether a similar trend can be observed in the European aviation network after deregulation. Data is used for all airports in the European Union receiving scheduled services for the period 1990–98, and both intra‐European and intercontinental services are considered.The findings on the airport level suggest that intercontinental traffic is increasingly concentrated on Europe’s primary hubs, and that intra‐European traffic is increasingly concentrated on smaller airports in the European aviation network. On the route level, the results support the claim that the structure of the European aviation network has moved in the direction of a hub‐and‐spoke network over the sample period with the secondary hubs playing a more important role in the hub‐spoke traffic.

Modern submarine cable telephony and the use of submerged repeaters

With the growth of inter-continental service the provision of large numbers of circuits on submarine cables will probably become a major problem in post-war telephony, as radio telephony is unlikely to meet all requirements. In this paper, an account of the present position of submarine-cable telephony is given, and the problem of the increased utilization of cables is examined. Major progress now turns mainly on the development of suitable submerged repeaters, and details are given of a repeater recently laid in the Irish Sea by the British Post Office. This repeater is suitable for comparatively shallow waters only, but is believed to be the first submerged repeater to be included in a working cable system. By its introduction the traffic capacity of the cable has been increased from 24 to 48 circuits.

World-Wide Telephony-Its Problems and Future*

The rapid development of large telephone networks giving a high grade of service between large numbers of telephones in continental areas has laid the foundation for the development of world-wide telephone service. Beginning in 1927 with the establishment of the first commercial telephone circuit between Europe and North America, intercontinental telephone service has, during the past five years, extended rapidly, and with further extensions already definitely planned, will embrace all of the continents and make possible the connection together of practically any two telephones in the world. Up to the present time radio has been used to overcome the peculiar technical obstacles in the provision of intercontinental circuits. Two portions of the radio spectrum are suitable for this purpose, the long wave providing only a few circuits and the short wave providing for possibly several hundred circuits in the world as a whole. Plans have already been made for the important route between Europe and North America to supplement these with a telephone cable and the use of wire lines for intercontinental routes may become more important in the future. The full development of intercontinental telephony is affected by a number of general difficulties. Of these the differences in time between different parts of the earth's surface are inherent. Differences in language both affect the ease with which customers can converse over the telephone, and complicate the operating problem. Furthermore, some of the differences in operating and commercial practices in the telephone networks of different continents which have in the past developed largely independently of each other, require consideration in the building up of intercontinental services. The full development of intercontinental telephony is dependent upon the continued progress in working out these problems and in an extension of the brilliant scientific and engineering achievements which have made possible the present services. It is to be expected that with the further growth of intercontinental service it will be found desirable in the future to adopt a general world-wide plan for the routing of intercontinental messages somewhat comparable to the plans for continental telephone service already under consideration or in use. While political considerations may temporarily affect the form of the world-wide network, ultimately the requirements of economy and good service will no doubt be determining factors in such a plan. It is to be hoped that the continued closer knitting together of the nations and races of the world by intercontinental telephone circuits will be a great contribution to international friendship and good will. The authors wish to acknowledge their indebtedness to a number of telephone administrations who have provided them with information regarding present and proposed intercontinental services, supplementing the data previously published. They have also drawn freely on the material presented in the bibliography of Appendix 2, and this material has been of assistance. The authors also express appreciation of the assistance given them by a number of their associates in the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, particularly Messrs. O. B. Blackwell, A. B. Clark, L. Espenschied, O. T. Laube, H. S. Osborne and H. E. Shreeve.

Long Distance Telephone Circuits in Cable*

This paper first very briefly reviews the history of long distance telephone cables in the United States. A statement is then given of the basis of the electrical design of present day cables, followed by a discussion of the standards applied to cable circuits and the application of cables to the telephone needs of the country. While the present system is satisfactory for the circuits now used in cable up to distances of 1800 miles (3000 kilometers) or more, it would not be satisfactory for the much greater distances expected for the future, both for continental and intercontinental service. The paper closes with a brief account of the progress which has been made in the development of a cable carrier telephone system which is expected to be satisfactory for any distances which may in the future be spanned by telephone circuits in cable. The authors wish to acknowledge their appreciation of the assistance given them by a number of their associates in the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, particularly Messrs. L. G. Abraham and R. M. Goetchius.