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on Transport Economics |
| By: | Xubei Luo (The World Bank); Nong Zhu (The World Bank); Heng-fu Zou (The World Bank) |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cuf:wpaper:536&r=tre |
| By: | David Bartolini (Department of Economics, Università Politecnica delle Marche.); Alberto Gaggero (Department of Economics, University of Pavia) |
| Abstract: | This paper conducts an empirical analysis of the determinants of airline alliances. Well established airlines with large passengers' volumes are more likely to participate in an alliance and are also essential for alliance survivability. In line with this finding, older air-lines have a higher probability of being part of an alliance. Airlines operating with high load factors consider alliance participation as a significant alternative to fleet capacity expansion. As their market share grows, alliances become more appealing to airlines. Competitors' decision to enter an alliance tends to have a positive impact on alliance participation. The relatively similar magnitude and effect of the regressors' coefficients across different alliance choices, suggests that the airline's major decision is not to choose a specific alliance, but rather considering whether to enter into an alliance, as a possible strategy within its business model. |
| Keywords: | Discrete choice model, Oneworld, Sky Team, Star Alliance. |
| JEL: | C23 L10 L93 |
| Date: | 2012–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pav:wpaper:165&r=tre |
| By: | Burks, Stephen V. (University of Minnesota, Morris); Guy, Frederick (Birkbeck College, University of London) |
| Abstract: | Using evidence from recent work on truckers and disaggregated older data prior researchers did not have, we revisit a classic topic and find some new answers. We focus on differentials in average annual earnings at the firm level among mileage-paid over-the-road tractor-trailer drivers ("road drivers") employed by US for-hire trucking companies, before and after economic deregulation. Road driver output is individualized, and pay is on the basis of a piece rate (mileage). However, road drivers work under two distinct logistical systems – less-than-truckload [LTL], and truckload [TL] – associated with two different forms of work organization. We find that – contrary to the predictions of Rose (1987) – not only are road drivers for LTL companies paid more than those for TL companies, but in LTL the union earnings premium was maintained following deregulation and union coverage fell slowly, while in TL both the union differential and union coverage fell sharply. We review relevant theoretical explanations: payment for cognitive abilities or non-pecuniary disamenities; standard efficiency wage models based on independent utilities; sharing of product market rents; equity concerns resulting from social comparisons between employee groups; and differences in work organization as a source of union rents or quasi-rents. Only equity concerns, for the LTL earnings differential, and quasi rents (but not a union threat effect, contrary to Henrickson and Wilson (2008)), for union coverage and premium in LTL, are consistent with our empirical results. Both earnings differentials are based on differences in work organization, rather than differences in the workers or the work itself. |
| Keywords: | fair wage, equity, compensating differential, cognitive ability, quasi-rent, rent-sharing, work organization, trucking, trucker, less-than-truckload (LTL), truckload (TL), regulation, deregulation, union premium |
| JEL: | J31 J42 L92 |
| Date: | 2012–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6375&r=tre |
| By: | Charles Figuières; Fabien Prieur; Mabel Tidball |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a two-country general equilibrium model with endogenous growth where governments behave strategically in the provision of productive infrastructure. The public capitals enter both national and foreign production as an external input, and they are nanced by a at tax on income. In the private sector, fi rms and households take the public policy as given when making their decisions. For arbitrary constant tax rates, the dynamic analysis reveals two important features. Firstly, under constant returns, the two countries growth rates differ during the transition but are identical on the balanced growth path. Secondly, due to the infrastructure externality, assuming away constant returns to scale a country with decreasing returns can experience sustained growth provided that the other grows at a positive constant rate. Then we endogeneize tax rates. It is shown that both a Markov Perfect Equilibrium (MPE) and a Centralized Solution (CS) exist, even when the parameters allow for endogenous growth, therefore explosive paths for the state variables. Nash growth rates are compared with the centralized rates. We show that cooperation in infrastructure provision does not necessarily lead to higher growth for each country. We also show that, in some con gurations of households' preferences and initial conditions, cooperation would call for a slowdown in the initial stages of development, whereas strategic investments would not. Lastly, depending also on the con guration of preferences, we show that cooperation can increase or decrease the gap between countries' growth rates. |
| Date: | 2012–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lam:wpaper:12-07&r=tre |
| By: | Adamos Adamou; Sofronis Clerides; Theodoros Zachariadis |
| Abstract: | Vehicle taxation based on CO2 emissions is increasingly being adopted worldwide in order to shift consumer purchases to low-carbon cars, yet little is known about the effectiveness and overall economic impact of these schemes. We focus on feebate schemes, which impose a fee on high-carbon vehicles and give a rebate to purchasers of low-carbon automobiles. We estimate a discrete choice model of demand for automobiles in Germany and simulate the impact of alternative feebate schemes on emissions, consumer welfare, public revenues and firm profits. The analysis shows that a well-designed scheme can lead to emission reductions without reducing overall welfare. |
| Keywords: | CO2 emissions, German automobile market, feebates, carbon taxation |
| Date: | 2012–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucy:cypeua:01-2012&r=tre |
| By: | Roger Fouquet |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this paper is to estimate trends in income and price elasticities and to offer insights for the future growth in transport use, with particular emphasis on the impact of energy and technological transitions. The results indicate that income and price elasticities of passenger transport demand in the United Kingdom were very large (3.1 and -1.5, respectively) in the mid-nineteenth century, and declined since then. In 2010, long run income and price elasticity of aggregate land transport demand were estimated to be 0.8 and -0.6. These trends suggest that future elasticities related to transport demand in developed economies may decline very gradually and, in developing economies, where elasticities are often larger, they will probably decline more rapidly as the economies develop. Because of the declining trends in elasticities, future energy and technological transitions are not likely to generate the growth rates in energy consumption that occurred following transitions in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, energy and technological transitions, such as the car and the airplane, appear to have delayed and probably will delay declining trends in income and price elasticity of aggregate land transport demand. |
| Keywords: | Energy Services, Demand, Transport, Economic Development, Rebound Effect. |
| Date: | 2012–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bcc:wpaper:2012-01&r=tre |
| By: | Andrea Balluchi (Pure Power Control Navacchio di Cascina (PI)); Luca Benvenuti (Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica "Antonio Ruberti" Sapienza, Universita' di Roma); Maria D. Di Benedetto (DIEL Università dell’Aquila); Alberto L. Sangiovanni–Vincentelli (EECS Dept., University of California at Berkeley,) |
| Abstract: | A design methodology is presented for dynamical observers of hybrid systems with linear continuous-time dynamics that reconstruct the complete state (discrete location and continuous state) from the knowledge of the inputs and outputs of a hybrid plant. Given a current-location observable living hybrid system with minimum dwell-time, we prove that exponential ultimate boundedness for an hybrid observer can always be achieved. We also prove that the observer correctly identifies (apart from an initial finite number of transitions) the sequence of hybrid system locations even when the complementary outputs are generated with some delay with respect to the corresponding transitions in the plant.We then present the application of the theory to the problem of on–line identification of the actual engaged gear for a car, an important contribution. The relevance of this problem is related to engine control strategies achieving high performance and efficient emissions control which depend critically on the knowledge of the engaged gear. The performance of the observer was tested with (real and not simulated) experimental data obtained in Magneti Marelli Powertrain using an Opel Astra equipped with a Diesel engine and a robotized gearbox SeleSpeed. |
| Keywords: | Mixed integer programming; Concave penalty functions; Frank-Wolfe algorithm; Feasibility Problem |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aeg:wpaper:2012-1&r=tre |
| By: | Allen Sørensen (Department of Economics and Business, Aarhus University, Denmark) |
| Abstract: | This paper addresses welfare effects from trade liberalization in a heterogeneous-fi?rms trade model including the empirically important per-unit (i.e. additive) trade costs in addition to the conventional iceberg (i.e. multiplicative) and fi?xed trade costs. The novel contribution of the paper is the result that the welfare gain for a given increase in trade openness is higher for reductions in per-unit (additive) trade costs than for reductions in iceberg (multiplicative) trade costs. The ranking derives from differences in intra-industry reallocations and in particular from dissimilar impacts on the number of exporters (i.e., the extensive margin of trade). |
| Keywords: | iceberg trade costs, per-unit |
| JEL: | F12 F13 F15 |
| Date: | 2012–02–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aah:aarhec:2012-07&r=tre |
| By: | Shanjun Li; Joshua Linn; Erich Muehlegger |
| Abstract: | Gasoline taxes can be employed to correct externalities associated with automobile use, to reduce dependency on foreign oil, and to raise government revenue. Our understanding of the optimal gasoline tax and the efficacy of existing taxes is largely based on empirical analysis of consumer responses to gasoline price changes. In this paper, we directly examine how gasoline taxes affect consumer behavior as distinct from tax-exclusive gasoline prices. Our analysis shows that a 5-cent tax increase reduces gasoline consumption by 1.3 percent in the short-run, much larger than that from a 5-cent increase in the tax-exclusive gasoline price. This difference suggests that traditional analysis could significantly underestimate policy impacts of tax changes. We further investigate the differential effect from gasoline taxes and tax-exclusive gasoline prices on both the intensive and extensive margins of gasoline consumption. We discuss implications of our findings for the estimation of the implicit discount rate for vehicle purchases and for the fiscal benefits of raising taxes. |
| JEL: | H3 Q4 Q5 |
| Date: | 2012–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17891&r=tre |
| By: | Abhijit Banerjee; Esther Duflo; Nancy Qian |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates the effect of access to transportation networks on regional economic outcomes in China over a twenty-period of rapid income growth. It addresses the problem of the endogenous placement of networks by exploiting the fact that these networks tend to connect historical cities. Our results show that proximity to transportation networks have a moderate positive causal effect on per capita GDP levels across sectors, but no effect on per capita GDP growth. We provide a simple theoretical framework with empirically testable predictions to interpret our results. We argue that our results are consistent with factor mobility playing an important role in determining the economic benefits of infrastructure development. |
| JEL: | D2 O11 O4 R4 |
| Date: | 2012–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17897&r=tre |