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on Transport Economics |
| By: | Ghani, Ejaz; Goswami, Arti Grover; Kerr, William R. |
| Abstract: | The infrastructure gap is one of the most significant impediments to India realizing its growth and poverty reduction potential. Although India’s transport network is one of the most extensive in the world, accessibility and connectivity are limited. Only 20 percent of the national highway network (which carries 40 percent of traffic) is four-lane and one-fourth of the rural population does not have access to an all-weather road. It is estimated that the transport sector alone will require an investment of nearly US$500 billion over the next 10 years. This paper investigates the impact of the Golden Quadrilateral highway project on the Indian organized manufacturing sector using enterprise data. The Golden Quadrilateral project upgraded the quality and width of 5,846 km of roads in India. The analysis uses a difference-in-difference estimation strategy to compare non-nodal districts based on their distance from the highway system. It finds several positive effects for non-nodal districts located 0-10 km from the Golden Quadrilateral that are not present in districts 10-50 km away, most notably higher entry rates and increases in plant productivity. These results are not present for districts located on another major highway system, the North-South East-West corridor. Improvements for portions of the North-South East-West corridor system were planned to occur at the same time as the Golden Quadrilateral but were subsequently delayed. Additional tests show that the Golden Quadrilateral project’s effect operates in part through a stronger sorting of land-intensive industries from nodal districts to non-nodal districts located on the Golden Quadrilateral network. The Golden Quadrilateral upgrades further helped spread economic activity to moderate-density districts and intermediate size cities. |
| Keywords: | Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Subnational Economic Development,E-Business,Housing&Human Habitats,Labor Policies |
| Date: | 2013–01–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6320&r=tre |
| By: | Maria Dementyeva (VU University Amsterdam); Paul R. Koster (VU University Amsterdam); Erik T. Verhoef (VU University Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | Accident externalities are among the most important external costs of road transport. We study the regulation of these when insurance companies have market power. Using analytical models, we compare a public-welfare maximizing monopoly with a private profit-maximizing monopoly, and markets where two or more firms compete. A central mechanism in the analysis is the accident externality that individual drivers impose on one another via their presence on the road. Insurance companies will internalize some of these externalities, depending on their degree of market power. We derive optimal insurance premiums, and "manipulable" taxes that take into account the response of the firm to the tax rule applied by the government. Furthermore, we study the taxation of road users under different assumptions on the market structure. We illustrate our analytical results with numerical examples, in order to better understand the determinants of the relative performance of different market structures. |
| Keywords: | accident externalities; traffic regulation; safety; second-best; market power |
| JEL: | D43 D62 R41 R48 |
| Date: | 2013–01–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:uvatin:20130019&r=tre |
| By: | Ye Li; Peter Jan Engelen; Clemens Kool |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we contribute to the literature by including a knock-out barrier option in a compound real option model to take account of immediate project failure, a so- called sudden death. We apply the model to the case of hydrogen infrastructure development. In our case study, we find that even for the least conservative valuation method no profitable business case can be made for the development of hydrogen as a sustainable transportation mode. However, we do provide some suggestive scenarios that plausible tax schedules can be designed to overcome the starting problems for hydrogen infrastructure development. To the extent that sudden project failure would be predominantly caused by potential reversals in political support, a cheap way to make the development of hydrogen infrastructure - and other similar projects - more attractive would be to design credible long-term political commitments to this type of development. |
| Keywords: | Uncertainty, real option, barrier option, investment failure, hydrogen infrastructure investment |
| JEL: | G32 O32 Q42 |
| Date: | 2012–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:use:tkiwps:1301&r=tre |
| By: | Michela Catenacci (Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei); Elena Verdolini (Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei and Centro Euro-Mediterraneo per i Cambiamenti Climatici); Valentina Bosetti (Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei and Centro Euro-Mediterraneo per i Cambiamenti Climatici); Giulia Fiorese (Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei and Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione, Politecnico di Milano); Nadia Ameli |
| Abstract: | The paper describes the results of a survey, carried out with leading EU experts, on the capacity of both fully electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles to reach commercial success in the next twenty years. The success of electric transport is hampered by a combination of low range, scarce efficiency and high costs of batteries. Costs are expected to decrease in response to increasing sales volume and technical improvements, and advances would result from adequate investments in research, development and demonstration (RD&D). Experts’ judgements are collected to shed light on the inherently uncertain relationship between RD&D efforts and consequent technical progress, and to assess the complex dynamics that will hinder or support the widespread diffusion of electric vehicles. The analysis of the experts’ data results in a number of important policy recommendations to guide future RD&D choices and target commitments both for the EU and its member states. |
| Keywords: | Expert Elicitation, Battery Technologies, Electric Vehicles |
| JEL: | Q5 Q55 |
| Date: | 2012–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fem:femwpa:2012.93&r=tre |
| By: | Ours, J.C. van; Vollaard, B.A. (Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research) |
| Abstract: | We provide evidence for a beneficial welfare impact of a crime policy that is targeted at strenghtening victim precaution. Regulation made application of the electronic engine immobilizer, a simple and low-cost anti-theft device, mandatory for all new cars sold within the European Union as of 1998. We exploit the regulation as source of exogenous variation in use of the device by year of manufacture of cars. Based on detailed data at the level of car models, we find that uniform application of the security device reduced the probability of car theft by an estimated 50 percent on average in the Netherlands during 1995-2008, accounting for both the protective effect on cars with the device and the displacement effect on cars without the device. The costs per prevented theft equal some 1,500 Euro; a fraction of the social benefits of a prevented car theft. |
| Keywords: | car theft;government regulation;crime;victim precaution |
| JEL: | K42 H11 H23 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:kubcen:2013004&r=tre |
| By: | Nathalie Picard; André de Palma; Ignacio A. Inoa (THEMA, Universite de Cergy-Pontoise and THEMA; ENS Cachan; THEMA, Universite de Cergy-Pontoise and THEMA) |
| Abstract: | There is still a long way to achieve the goal of providing a theoretical and empirical framework to model and apply economics of the family. Decision-making within the family has been neglected too long in transportation. Two special issues by Bhat and Pendyala, 2005 [15] and by Timmermans and Junyi Zhang, 2009 [76] provide the most notable exceptions. The objective of this paper is to set-up a flexible framework to discuss the development of integrated transportation models involving interacting and interdependent actors; updating previous reviews from the point of view of economics of the family . Transportation is very keen to have access to this type of models, since their applications are numerous. Let mention, for example, residential location choice, workplace choice, car ownership, choice of children’s school, mode choice, departure time choice activity patterns and the like. The (non unitary) economics of the family models are totally different models, which do not merely extend existing discrete choice models. They introduce new concepts, which are specific to within family interactions: negotiation, altruism, or repeated interaction and Pareto optimality. This review is completed with the study of different types of accessibility measures including recent work on time-geography measures of accessibility. |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ema:worpap:2013-03&r=tre |
| By: | Thomas Götschi; Beat Hintermann (University of Basel) |
| Abstract: | <span lang="EN-US">In this paper we develop a framework to value public investments with the purpose of increasing bicycling that explicitly accounts internal costs of bicycling, which are typically neglected in current established approaches that value bicycle spending by means of gross health benefits alone, as are inframarginal benefits to existing cyclists. </span>By monetizing internal costs independent of health benefits, we can assess the degree of internalization of private benefits and/or the internalization of external benefits such as environmental improvements due to altruistic preferences by cyclists. Our framework further conceptualizes the complementarity between “hard” (investments in infrastructure) and “soft” measures (informational campaigns) in bicycle policy. Finally, we propose an empirical method for identifying internal costs using a latent variable approach and apply it to eight Swiss cities. Our results imply that Swiss cyclists internalize more than mortality-based benefits. However, because data for some important bicycle mode choice determinants are not available, our results cannot inform policy directly at the current stage. Instead, the contributions of our paper are the development of an economically consistent framework to value public bicycle investments and the identification of crucial data needs for the development of comprehensive assessments informing bicycle policy decisions. |
| Keywords: | Cost-benefit analysis, bicycle, valuation, latent variable, MIMIC |
| JEL: | H43 H76 Q51 R41 R42 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2013/02&r=tre |
| By: | Sumit Kunnumkal; Kalyan Talluri |
| Abstract: | The choice network revenue management model incorporates customer purchase behavior as a function of the offered products, and is the appropriate model for airline and hotel network revenue management, dynamic sales of bundles, and dynamic assortment optimization. The optimization problem is a stochastic dynamic program and is intractable. A certainty-equivalence relaxation of the dynamic program, called the choice deterministic linear program (CDLP) is usually used to generate dyamic controls. Recently, a compact linear programming formulation of this linear program was given for the multi-segment multinomial-logit (MNL) model of customer choice with non-overlapping consideration sets. Our objective is to obtain a tighter bound than this formulation while retaining the appealing properties of a compact linear programming representation. To this end, it is natural to consider the affine relaxation of the dynamic program. We first show that the affine relaxation is NP-complete even for a single-segment MNL model. Nevertheless, by analyzing the affine relaxation we derive a new compact linear program that approximates the dynamic programming value function better than CDLP, provably between the CDLP value and the affine relaxation, and often coming close to the latter in our numerical experiments. When the segment consideration sets overlap, we show that some strong equalities called product cuts developed for the CDLP remain valid for our new formulation. Finally we perform extensive numerical comparisons on the various bounds to evaluate their performance. |
| Keywords: | Optimization Techniques; Programming Models; Dynamic Analysis; Air Transportation ; Sports; Gambling; Recreation; Tourism; Production Management |
| JEL: | C61 L93 L83 M11 |
| Date: | 2012–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upf:upfgen:1349&r=tre |
| By: | Ignacio A. Inoa; Nathalie Picard; André de Palma (THEMA, Universite de Cergy-Pontoise and THEMA; THEMA, Universite de Cergy-Pontoise and THEMA; ENS Cachan) |
| Abstract: | The effect of an individual-specific measure of accessibility to jobs is analyzed using a three-level nested logit model of residential location, workplace, and job type choice. This measure takes into account the attractiveness of different job types when the workplace choice is anticipated in the residential location decision. The model allows for variation in the preferences for job types across individuals and accounts for individual heterogeneity of preferences at each choice level in the following dimensions: education, age, gender and children. Using data from the Greater Paris Area, estimation results indicate that the individual-specific accessibility measure is an important determinant of the residential location choice and its effect differ along the life cycle. Results also show that the job type attractiveness measure is a more significant predictor of workplace location than the standard measures. |
| Keywords: | residential location, job location, accessibility, nested logit, Greater Paris. |
| JEL: | R21 C35 C51 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ema:worpap:2013-02&r=tre |
| By: | Samir Sbabou (University of Caen Basse-Normandie - CREM UMR CNRS 6211, France); Hatem Smaoui (CEMOI, Université de la Réunion); Abderrahmane Ziad (University of Caen Basse-Normandie - CREM UMR CNRS 6211, France) |
| Abstract: | La première partie propose une revue de littérature sur les jeux de congestions et les jeux de potentiel exact. La deuxième partie traite les jeux de congestion à choix unique dans le cas symétrique et propose une formule simple et pratique permettant de trouver l'ensemble de tous les équilibres de Nash. La troisième partie analyse la famille des jeux de congestion à choix unique non symétriques. Ici l'effet de congestion n'est pas le même sur l'ensemble des joueurs. Lorsqu'il existe seulement deux ressources ou lorsque la partition est exacte (), une preuve constructive est présentée et permet de calculer plus facilement (au moins) un équilibre de Nash, sans faire appel ni aux fonctions de potentiel (Rosenthal, 1973), ni aux mécanismes d'amélioration (Milchtaich, 1996). Enfn, nous examinons la possibilité d'exploiter nos résultats dans certaines applications des jeux de congestion telles que les jeux de congestion réseau et les jeux d'allocation de tâches. |
| Keywords: | Jeux de congestion, Jeux de potentiel, Fonction de potentiel, Équilibre de Nash, Symétrique, Non symétrique, Choix unique, Réseau, Allocation de tâches, Voie d'amélioration, FIP |
| JEL: | C72 |
| Date: | 2013–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tut:cremwp:201303&r=tre |
| By: | Tiziana D’Alfonso (Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Universita' degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza"); Cinzia Daraio (Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Universita' degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza"); Alberto Nastasi (Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Universita' degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza") |
| Abstract: | This paper provides new empirical evidence on the efficiency of Italian airports. Analysing data on 2010 trough conditional e?ciency measures, we find that competition affects mostly the frontier of best performers, whilst airports that are lagging behind are less influenced by it. By applying a novel two stage approach, we show that competition has an inverse U-shape impact. Finally, the bi-modal shape of the distribution of pure efficiency indicates the existence of two differently managed groups of airports. |
| Keywords: | Italian airports; competition; DEA; conditional efficiency; two stage analysis |
| Date: | 2013–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aeg:report:2013-01&r=tre |