Conventional measures of maritime supply shocks rely on spot prices, which often conflate demand shifts and carriers' pricing strategies. This paper isolates exogenous supply shocks by leveraging vessel flows through the Suez Canal, Strait of Malacca, and Panama Canal. Employing a structural VAR with narrative sign restrictions, I show that physical bottlenecks drive global inflation dynamics that freight rate indices fail to capture. The transmission is highly heterogeneous: while disruptions trigger significant producer price inflation in the EU and China, they generate a counter-intuitive deflationary response in US consumer prices. These findings demonstrate that the inflationary impact of supply chain disruptions is strictly determined by the geography of trade patterns rather than being a symmetric global shock.

This paper investigates the impact of shipping cost pressures on the transmission of oil supply shocks to inflation. Using local projections on a panel of oil-importing and exporting countries, we show that headline, energy, and producer price inflation respond significantly more strongly and persistently to oil supply shocks when shipping cost pressures are high. While the responses of importers and exporters typically differ, high shipping cost pressures amplify the inflationary effects of oil shocks in both sets of countries. These findings extend to the case of oil demand shocks.

Over the last decade, many cities in the world have been facing the impact of urban population growth and rapid e-commerce spread on freight volumes and consequently on the number of road freight vehicles. These dynamics have fostered the central role of last-mile logistics. The transport sector is responsible for around 25% of total GHG global emissions, 30% of which are related to freight road transport. Urban freight transportation has remarkable implications in terms of air pollution, noise, and road security. In this context, the electrification of urban fleets could represent a viable and efficient solution to mitigate the environmental footprint of last-mile logistics. Furthermore, last-mile logistics also involves high organization costs and time inefficiencies for transportation firms and customers. The technological development of routing processes through a new optimized IT system (e.g., by means of digital twins) may play a key role in “greening” the last-mile logistic sector. In this research, we consider a case study of investments in Electric Vehicles, aiming at assessing their environmental and monetary costs and benefits, and the scalability of such a policy.

Based on growing interest in sustainable solutions in last-mile logistics, one of the most promising investments is the electrification of commercial fleets to decrease the high level of pollution created by urban freight traffic. In this case study, vans that can be driven with a C1 European driving license are considered, mainly used in B2B deliveries to small shops and SMEs in city centres. The purpose of this research is to analyse the reasons behind the choice of switching the last-mile logistic service fleet to electric and its economic and environmental implications and to analyse the main barriers to its implementation. To do so, we use interviews from managers working in a successful Urban Consolidation Center (UCC) in Italy. The Italian energy infrastructure, the cost of electric vans, and the actual insufficient technological development of van batteries are the key issues highlighted in the interviews, but lower operating costs, lower fuel costs, a decrease in negative environmental externalities, possible institutional cooperation and better working conditions for couriers are the main features to consider in the switch to electric.

Purpose: This paper evaluates the long-term economic and environmental performance of alternative powertrain technologies for medium-heavy commercial fleets in urban logistics. It aims to determine how different configurations – Internal Combustion Engine (ICE), Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), and Electric Vehicles (EVs) – influence the sustainability and cost efficiency of last-mile operations, contributing to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11. Design: A retrospective Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) model is applied to a twenty-year dataset (2004–2023) from the Cityporto Padova fleet, integrating private and external costs. The analysis builds on historical purchase, operational, maintenance, and infrastructure expenditures and monetizes emissions and noise externalities following European guidelines. Sensitivity and switching analyses assess the influence of energy prices, discount rate, and subsidy intensity on fleet competitiveness. Findings: CNG fleets achieve the lowest private TCO (0.79 €/km), outperforming ICE (0.82 €/km) and mixed CNG–EV fleets (0.84 €/km). When externalities are included, mixed fleets yield the lowest societal cost, halving CO₂ emissions relative to ICE. Originality: By combining historical market data, real fleet operations, and external-cost monetization, this paper provides a novel retrospective TCO analysis for medium-heavy fleets. It demonstrates the transitional role of CNG and proposes a quantification of the policy conditions required for EV competitiveness in urban freight.