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Abstract
This thesis focuses on the rise of the third party logistics. It does so by proposing answers to
three questions: on which economic models relies the organization of the third party logistic?
Do the firms belonging to the third party logistic share the strategy defined at the group level?
For what reasons logistics and transport activities are outsourced?
The thesis is organized in four chapters. The first chapter presents an historical introduction to
the logistic activities. It focuses on the merchants and the firms that have handled trade
through diverse periods from the Roman Empire to the Industrial Revolution. I described the
way used to increase the quality and the quantity of information available to the merchants.
The second chapter explains the rise of new economic models to organize logistic activities.
The third and fourth chapters present two econometric studies. The third chapter verifies if the
firms belonging to a logistic and transport group comply with the strategy of the group. The
fourth chapter studies the factors that favor the outsourcing of logistics activities.
Trade can be a perilous activity. The first chapter presents an historical study of the different
ways that have reduced the trade uncertainty for the merchants. In particular, I analyze how
the quality and the quantity of information available to the merchants have increased through
time. In this aim, I have selected four historical periods: the Roman Empire, three groups of
merchants during the middle age (the Maghribi traders of the Fatimid Empire, the Hanseatic
League and the Florentine entrepreneurs), the British Empire and the English East India
Company, and the first Industrial Revolution in the United States of America (USA). For each
of these periods, I have investigated if the manner through which trade was organized by
merchants, the institutions within which the merchants evolved and the technologies at their
disposal helped the development of a better informational environment. This analysis shows
that the highly positive effects of empires on information (through the presence of uniform
institutions, the building of roads and markets places) have been slowly replaced by the
organizations and the institutions built at the merchant level once the empires collapsed.
Hierarchies and systems of habits and punishments created within the merchant communities
have permitted to increase the quality of information by deterring opportunistic behavior. This
chapter also underlines that the technological innovations of the XIX century in the domain of
information coupled to mass production have shifted the focus of the firms from gathering
information about where the products are made and if they were of a homogenous quality to
how to extract information about consumers’ desires. This change has highly contributed to
the end of the mercantile companies.
The second chapter considers the recent development of large international firms in the
logistics and transport industry. My work, in this chapter, is based on a comparison of the
American and French market for logistics and transport activities along the twentieth century.
I have retraced three important periods. The first period, from the end of the First World War
to the seventies, is marked by the growing competition between rail transport and road
haulage, and by the equally growing regulation in the various freight transport activities. The
second period, from the end of the seventies to the middle of the nineties, is a turning point
period for the transport sector; international trade became more liberalized, deregulation of
the transport sector occurred, new technologies were diffused, and many shippers adopted just
in time organization. This chapter shows that, as a consequence of these transformations, in a
third period running from the middle of the nineties through these days, many transportations
firms reacted by adopting a new form of organization more internationalized and more
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