Based on insights from transaction cost economics, this paper analyses the French “contrat type” for a voyage charter in freight river navigation. The “contrat type” is unique to France and it is envied abroad. But, economists have barely studied it. The paper explains how this contract is used to economize transaction costs in this sector and preserves the advantages of the market governance structure. The paper emphasizes how this legal institutional tool influences the economic effectiveness by highlighting its own characteristics. Finally, the paper identifies the necessary requirements that lack today to use this contract in court.
The inland waterway standard agreements represent in Transport Law one of the major area of expression of the Lex Mercatoria. Designed in four separate categories under the National Transport Council (CNT) and professional organizations, these standard agreements include, in fact, most of the usages and customs applicable to contracts for river transport as practiced in France. The development of such agreements respecting the customs and traditions of the professional world can effectively prevent the proliferation of all sorts of clauses in an economic environment that requires a constant effort of legal harmonization and a respect for the law against such abusive practices. But what lawfulness exactly? It is, from this point of view, very interesting that the very structure of these contracts fully comply with the normative concerns of French civil law and regulations which were, originally enacted to regulate and channel the contracting practices in the river area. But at a time when France is setting up a Transport Code (according to established law), and especially at the time of entry into force, on an international level, of the new Budapest Convention of June 22d, 2001 on the transport of goods by inland waterway (known as CMNI), a general assessment was binding on in the context of a necessary modernization of these contracts.
The legal nature of a contract is the necessary prerequisite to determine which rules apply. But it is sometimes the contrary and in particular as far as the contract of moving is concerned. For this contract the classification seems to be determined according to the solution which we wish to give. The intrusion of the consumer rights in the law of transportations of goods leads the judges and the legislators to intervene repeatedly and sometimes contradictorily on the legal obligations of the mover companies. Today these various reforms leave a taste of incompleteness to the point that we can wonder if the better solution would not the implementation of a standard contract of moving. To verify the relevance of such a proposition obliges beforehand to present the doctrinal analyses on the legal nature of the contract of moving, to understand the case law and legislative stakes which presided over the modifications to measure the necessity of a standard contract and think about his contents.
This paper seeks to study the household's mobility behaviour in Tehran in a context where the transport supply is mainly private. The objective is to present an analysis of tehrani household's transportation service expenditure, from the information based on an Iranian household consumption survey (2002). Detailed analysis of a sample of households' expenditures allows us to identify the major determinants of transportation service consumption in Tehran. We define as well seven transportation-service-consumer household categories. The various factors stimulating the mobility needs of each category are likely to limit its consumption capacity. The comparison of the weight of this expenditure in households' budget and income suggests then the inequalities between the citizens of Tehran regarding transport services. These comparisons prove the concurrence between public transport and private cars in Tehran, whose possession changes radically the household's consumption of transportation service to mostly private ones, to the detriment of public transport.
This work focuses on commuting in the Paris region. Literature in urban economics generally retains role of socio-economic characteristics but also urban structure of cities to explain work trips. From the Global Transport Survey of 2001 and INSEE population census of 1999, we want to test their relevance when explaining transport modal choice of workers in the region and distance our duration of journeys to work. Globally if our results highlight the key role of individual characteristics as sex, age, income and occupational status, they also show that residential location, through its urban structure, is an important determinant.