In this paper we examine how 23 industrialized countries treat wider economic impacts in transport appraisals. We identify 12 different types of impacts based on these countries' appraisal guidelines. Agglomeration impacts and Production changes in imperfect markets are the most widely accepted, being recognized by 14 and 10 countries, respectively. However, about half of the impacts are mentioned by only one country, and few recommend including the impacts directly in cost-benefit analyses. Several countries provide provisos or criteria that must be met before WEI can be assessed in the first place. We found method recommendations for quantifying wider economic impacts in 10 countries. However, with the exception of the UK Department for Transport's methodological framework, there is very little international consensus on the choice of appropriate methods. Our findings thus supplement and reinforce the conclusions from the Norwegian Official Report of the Hagen Committee (NOU 2012:16, 2012) that there is currently no established consensus on the magnitude and relevance of WEIs, or on how and which of these impacts should be taken into account in transport appraisals. Recommendations for further research and appraisal practices are provided.

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This paper presents estimates of logistics costs in Norway. Two different methodological approaches are taken: (i) use of the national freight transport model for Norway, in which logistics costs as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) are obtained from national freight flows between municipalities in Norway and from foreign trading partners and (ii) use of a survey of industry representatives, where the results are aggregated to the macro level and yield logistics costs as a share of GDP. The transport model includes detailed cost functions for transport and other logistics cost components along with a module for optimal shipment size, frequency and mode choice. Although the two approaches are quite different, we find almost identical estimates of transport costs. For the other logistics cost components (warehousing, capital costs, insurance, wastage, packaging and administration), the survey-based approach yielded slightly higher estimates, indicating that the freight transport model does not cover all logistics cost components.

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The companies that have their main "knowledge centre"-i.e. research and development laboratories-in the EU are indicated in italic. Many other companies, not included in the list above, compete on the European market on the basis of mostly imported products, such as personal computer makers from Taiwan or the USA. Especially important for the industrial structure in Europe are the suppliers of key components that determine the functionality of the product. This includes suppliers of integrated circuits-in particular, Philips, ST Microelectronics, Infineon (formerly Siemens)-and the large US and Japanese IC manufacturers with European production sites, and makers of display systems (Philips, Thomson), In addition to these large companies selling to the consumer, there are many more (usually smaller) companies that supply components and parts, or provide services to industrial players. Software is becoming an ever more important part of CE products. Most embedded software is developed by the product maker or under his control by smaller companies. Operating systems are in the hands of large (U.S.) companies, in particular Microsoft for desktop PCs, or owned by (consortia of) smaller ones, like the EPOC platform for personal organisers. Applications software comes from many companies, large and small alike.