On the Economies of Scale and Scope in Transport Network

From the author′s opinion, the natures of transport networks contribute to the inseparably relationship between the economies of scale and the economies of scope in this ultra multi-production industry, and caused the complexities of studying on the economies of scale and scope in transport. There have been a lot of ambiguities, or even mistakes, in both defining and using the concepts of economies of network, economies of scale, economies of scope, economies of traffic density, economies of size and so on in previous studies, so many confusions exit in this field. The paper presents that economies of transport network are composed by economies of traffic density and network size, which are transformed from economies of scale and economies of scope, and which take on many other transformations in practice. Based on this analysis frame, people can distinguish the market structure of various transport industries and their subsets, and build efficient regulation or management systems for the sectors. Moreover, it is helpful to understand the concepts of economies of scale and scope in the general micro-economic researches.