Frontier impedance effects and the growth of international exchanges: an empirical analysis for France

On the European Union scale, international traffic is growing faster than intra-national traffic. This phenomenon is often viewed as a consequence of the abatement of the frontier effect. In this article the frontier effect is analyzed, on the basis of data available for road traffic between France and its neighbors and of freight transport data available at the EU level. The concept is discussed in the light of this empirical analysis. The shortcomings of the static approach lead to a critical revaluation by means of a longitudinal approach. In the conclusion some potential directions for future research are discussed.