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on Transport Economics |
| By: | Richard Darbéra (LATTS - Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires et Sociétés - École des Ponts ParisTech (ENPC) - UPEM - Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | All over the world, the rapid spread of app-based private for-hire transport services competing with the traditional taxis has taken regulators by surprise and faced massive and sometimes violent reaction from the taxi drivers and taxi licence owners. Everywhere, politicians are pressed to legislate. And they face a dilemma: whether to satisfy the social demands of taxis for protection against this new competition or whether to support change so as to cater for the tremendous popularity of these new services. The social and political reasons for responding to the claims of the traditional taxi industry are well grounded but they are mostly short-term. We are here more interested by a longer-term perspective and propose to present some principles for the regulation of for-hire road passenger transportation services based on economic considerations. Some of these principles have already been partly applied by regulators in some countries; in some other countries they have been wilfully ignored. We draw examples from both to identify feasibility and pitfalls of some principles we put forward. For nearly four centuries, taxicab regulation was justified by two market failures that largely disappeared with the advent of smartphones. However, the fact that taxicab regulations were rendered obsolete does not mean that the for-hire road passenger transportation services do not need to be regulated, much to the contrary. There must first be regulations regarding the vehicles, the drivers and the operators. The principles underlying most of these regulations are now well established, drawing on the experience of cities like London. But the smartphone revolution brought a new actor in the field: the app-based platform that dispatches drivers to the potential riders. Although some of these firms present themselves as a mere market place that allows buyers, i.e. passengers, and sellers, i.e. drivers, to meet, the truth is quite different. The “equilibrium” prices are in fact set by the platform with a wide propensity to manipulation, as recent price wars have demonstrated. It is our opinion that this new market is prone to natural monopolies. We have shown some of the potential drawback of these monopolies and proposed some policy tools to prevent their emergence. Some of our recommendation may seem farfetched and much too premature. We believe that it is easier to implement them now that they still have little bearing. It will give time to adjust them to a situation that is rapidly evolving. |
| Abstract: | Partout dans le monde, le développement rapide des plateformes de mise en relation entre clients et transport public particulier de personnes (TPPP) concurrençant les taxis traditionnels a surpris les régulateurs. Partout il a provoqué une réaction massive et parfois violente des chauffeurs de taxi et des propriétaires de licences de taxi. Partout, les politiciens sont pressés de légiférer. Et ils sont confrontés à un dilemme: répondre aux demandes sociales des taxis pour les protéger contre cette nouvelle concurrence ou bien accompagner le changement afin de répondre à l'énorme popularité de ces nouveaux services. Les raisons sociales et politiques pour répondre aux revendications de l'industrie traditionnelle du taxi sont bien fondées, mais elles sont pour la plupart à court terme. Nous sommes ici plus intéressés par une perspective à plus long terme et proposons de présenter quelques principes pour la réglementation des services de TPPP basés sur des considérations économiques. Certains de ces principes ont déjà été appliqués en partie par les régulateurs de certains pays; dans d'autres pays, on les a délibérément ignorés. Nous en tirons des exemples pour évaluer la faisabilité de certains principes que nous proposons. Pendant près de quatre siècles, la réglementation des taxis a été justifiée par deux défaillances du marché qui ont largement disparu avec l'arrivée des smartphones. Toutefois, le fait que la réglementation des taxis soit obsolète ne signifie pas que les services de TPPP n'ont pas besoin d'être réglementés, bien au contraire. Il doit d'abord y avoir des règlements concernant les véhicules, les conducteurs et les opérateurs. Les principes sous-jacents à la plupart de ces règlements sont maintenant bien établis, en s'appuyant sur l'expérience de villes comme Londres. Mais la révolution smartphone a apporté un nouvel acteur dans le domaine: la plate-forme qui met en relation les chauffeurs avec leurs clients potentiels. Bien que certaines de ces entreprises se présentent comme un simple marché qui permet aux acheteurs, c'est-à-dire aux passagers et aux vendeurs, c'est-à-dire aux conducteurs, de se rencontrer, la vérité est tout à fait différente. Les prix « d'équilibre » sont en fait fixés par la plate-forme avec une large propension à la manipulation, comme les récentes guerres de prix ont démontré. Nous sommes d'avis que ce nouveau marché est sujet aux monopoles naturels. Nous avons montré quelques-uns des inconvénients potentiels de ces monopoles et proposé certains instruments de politique pour empêcher leur émergence. |
| Keywords: | regulation, app-based transport companies, taxicab,private hire vehicles |
| Date: | 2015–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-01399598&r=tre |
| By: | Blom Västberg, Oskar; Karlström, Anders; Jonsson, Daniel; Sundberg, Marcus |
| Abstract: | Activity based travel demand models are based on the idea that travel is derived from the demand to participate in different activities. Predicting travel demand should therefore include the prediction of demand for activity participation. Time-space constraints, such as working hours, restricts when and where different activities can be conducted, and plays an important role in determining how people choose to travel. Travelling is seen as a possibly costly link between different activities, that also implicitly leads to missed opportunities for activity participation. With a microeconomic foundation, activity based models can further be used for appraisal and for accessibility measures. However, most models up to date lack some dynamic consistency that, e.g., might make it hard to capture the trade-off between activity decisions at different times of the day. In this paper, we show how dynamic discrete choice theory can be used to formulate a travel demand model which includes choice of departure time for all trips, as well as number of trips, location, purpose and mode of transport. We estimate the model on travel diaries and show that the it is able to reproduce the distribution of, e.g., number of trips per day, departure times and travel time distributions. |
| Keywords: | Travel demand, Discrete choice, Dynamic discrete choice, Activity based modelling, |
| JEL: | R41 |
| Date: | 2016–11–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:75336&r=tre |
| By: | Ma, Chunbo; Stern, David I. |
| Abstract: | Meta-analyses of interfuel and capital-energy elasticities of substitution show that elasticity estimates are dependent on the type of data – time series, panel, or crosssection – and the estimators used. Econometric theory suggests that the between estimator might generate the best estimates of long-run elasticities but no existing estimates of elasticities of substitution have used it. Alternatively, Chirinko et al. argued in favor of estimating long-run elasticities of substitution using a long-run difference estimator. We provide estimates of China’s interfuel and interfactor elasticities of substitution using the between and long-run difference estimators. To address potential omitted variables bias, we add province level inefficiency and national technological change terms to our regression model. The results show that demand for coal and electricity in China is very inelastic, while demand for diesel and gasoline is elastic. With the exception of gasoline and diesel, there are limited substitution possibilities among the fuels. Substitution possibilities are greater between energy and labor than between energy and capital. The results are quite different to some previous studies for China but coincide well with the patterns found in meta-analyses for long-run estimates of elasticities of substitution. |
| Keywords: | Energy, substitution, elasticity, demand, China, Demand and Price Analysis, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, D24, Q40, |
| Date: | 2016–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:ancewp:249521&r=tre |
| By: | Ufuk Demiroglu; Caglar Yunculer |
| Abstract: | This paper is motivated by the surprising rapid growth of new light-vehicle sales in Turkey in 2015. Domestic sales grew 25%, dramatically surpassing the industry estimates of around 8%. Our approach is to inform the sales trend estimate with the information obtained from the light-vehicle stock (the number of cars and light trucks officially registered in the country), and the scrappage data. More specifically, we improve the sales trend estimate by estimating the trend of its stock. Using household data, we show that an important reason for the rapid sales growth is that an increasing share of household budgets is spent on automobile purchases. The elasticity of light-vehicle sales to cyclical changes in aggregate demand is high and robust; its estimates are around 6 with a standard deviation of about 0.5. The price elasticity of light-vehicle sales is estimated to be about 0.8, but the estimates are imprecise and not robust. We estimate the trend level of light-vehicle sales to be roughly 7 percent of the existing stock. A remarkable out-of-sample forecast performance is obtained for horizons up to nearly a decade by a regression equation using only a cyclical gap measure, the time trend and obvious policy dummies. Various specifications suggest that the strong 2015 growth of light-vehicle sales was predictable in late 2014. |
| Keywords: | Light vehicles, Light-vehicle stock, Number of registered cars, Light-vehicle scrappage, Automobile sales, Turkish economy |
| JEL: | E27 E32 L62 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tcb:wpaper:1627&r=tre |
| By: | Daniel Green; Brian T. Melzer; Jonathan A. Parker; Arcenis Rojas |
| Abstract: | We estimate the importance of household liquidity for the effect of the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) on vehicle transactions. We measure the average program impact by comparing households with "clunkers" eligible for CARS to households with similar vehicles that were ineligible. The liquidity provided by CARS contributed to its larger than anticipated take-up. Clunkers with existing loans, which required immediate repayment upon trade-in, were traded-in at much lower rates, an effect consistent with liquidity constraints and distinguishable from that of other debt, household income, and the size of the program subsidy. Household debt capacity did not measurably constrain participation. |
| JEL: | D14 E62 G18 H24 H31 |
| Date: | 2016–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22878&r=tre |
| By: | Wagner, Gary A. (Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland); Komarek, Timothy (Old Dominion University); Martin, Julia (Old Dominion University) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we examine the effect of light rail transit on the residential real estate market in Hampton Roads, Virginia. The Norfolk Tide light rail began operations in August 2011 and has experienced disappointing levels of ridership over its first four years of operations. We estimate the effect of the Tide using a difference-in-differences model and consider several outcome variables for the residential housing market, including sales price, sales-list price spread and the time-on-market. Our identification strategy exploits a proposed rail line in neighboring Virginia Beach, Virginia, that was rejected by a referendum in 1999. Overall, the results show negative consequences from the constructed light rail line. Properties within 1,500 meters experienced a decline in sales price of nearly 8 percent, while the sale-list price spread declined by approximately 2 percent. Our results highlight the potential negative effects of light rail, when potential accessibility benefits do not outweigh apparent local costs. |
| Keywords: | light rail transit; housing market; difference-in-difference; |
| JEL: | R3 R4 |
| Date: | 2016–11–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwp:1626&r=tre |
| By: | Tay-Ryang Koo; Frédéric Dobruszkes; Christine Lim |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/240973&r=tre |