Dr. Laetitia Dablanc will present a soon-to-be published book chapter on the impact of COVID-19 on urban logistics. Dr. Dablanc and her team have conducted three surveys in Paris, France, during the pandemic in 2020 on logistics service providers, logistics real estate developers as well as other stakeholders such as municipalities. These surveys show how urban freight activities have been challenged and transformed because of the pandemic. In addition to the survey results, Dr. Dablanc will also present an extensive literature review and data collection efforts on COVID-19 impacts on urban consumers’ shopping habits.

Dr. Laetitia Dablanc is a Professor at the University Gustave Eiffel in Paris where she heads the Logistics City Chair. Dr. Dablanc was previously Professor at the French Institute of Science and Technology for Transport, Development and Networks (IFSTTAR, University of Paris-Est). She leads the Young Initiative of the World Conference of Transport Research Society. She is a member of MetroFreight, an international network of research on urban freight sponsored by the Volvo Research and Education Foundations (VREF). Her areas of research are freight transportation, freight and the environment, urban freight and logistics, freight policies, and spatial issues related to logistics. Dr. Dablanc received a Ph.D. in transportation planning from Ecole des Ponts-ParisTech in Paris, France, and a Master’s degree in city and regional planning from Cornell University, USA. She was initially trained in policy analysis and economics at Sciences Po, Paris. Dr. Dablanc has authored or co-authored numerous publications on freight transportation. She participates regularly in scientific, institutional and business meetings around the world, as well as in the media.

Measuring the degree of competition in markets is important for setting competition and regulatory policy as well as developing management strategies. Commonly used structural indices, such as the HHI, overlook the way in which firms compete and, hence, set their prices in markets. We propose a new horizontal differentiation measure, which encapsulates firms’ portfolio of products as well as the degree of overlap and substitution between competing services. Applied to aviation markets, we term this measure Schedule Differentiation Metric, or SDM, and we demonstrate the significant importance of SDM in explaining price levels and structure.

This work is a collaboration with David Gillen, Tuba Delibasi, and Vijay Kumar.

Dr. Benny Mantin is a full professor and the Director of the Luxembourg Centre of Logistics and Supply Chain Management (LCL), at the University of Luxembourg, which is a member of the MIT’s SCALE network. His research covers diverse aspects of supply chain management, dynamic pricing, and revenue management, as well as transportation economics. More recently he has been working on sustainability in supply chains and harnessing technology to drive digital operations. His work was published in leading journals such as Productions and Operations Management, Marketing Science, EJOR as well as Transportation Research Parts A, B and E. His research has been recognized and supported by several grants. Prof. Mantin is a board member of the Journal of Air Transport Management, and he is on the advisory board of the European Aviation Conference. He joined the University of Luxembourg in 2017 following a tenure of 9 years at the University of Waterloo.