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on Transport Economics |
| By: | Yongyou Nie (School of Economics, Shanghai University, China); Enci Wang (School of Economics, Shanghai University, China); Qinxin Guo (Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University, Japan); Junyi Shen (Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration (RIEB), Kobe University, Japan, and School of Economics, Shanghai University, China) |
| Abstract: | In this study, we conducted a stated choice survey in Shanghai to examine the attitudes of Shanghai residents towards electric vehicles and their attributes. Multinomial Logit and Random Parameter Logit models were used to analyze the response data for three samples—the full sample, a subsample of potential electric vehicle purchasers, and a subsample of unlikely electric vehicle purchasers. We found that the respondents in each of the three groups preferred electric vehicles with a longer driving range, a shorter charging time, a faster maximum speed, lower pollution emissions, lower fuel cost, and a lower price. However, a comparison of the two subsamples showed that potential electric vehicle purchasers were willing to pay more than their counterparts for enhancing vehicle attributes. We also investigated the determinants of likely electric vehicle purchase and found a number of demographic characteristics that were statistically significant. |
| Keywords: | Keywords: Electric vehicles, Preferences, Stated choice experiment, Willingness to pay, Random Parameter Logit Model |
| JEL: | Q42 Q51 |
| Date: | 2017–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kob:dpaper:dp2017-21&r=tre |
| By: | Thomas R. Covert; Ryan Kellogg |
| Abstract: | The recent large-scale use of railroads to transport crude oil out of newly discovered shale formations has no recent precedent in the U.S. oil industry. This paper addresses the question of whether crude-by-rail is simply a transient phenomenon, owing to delays in pipeline construction, or whether it will be a durable presence in the industry by reducing investment in pipeline infrastructure. We develop a model of crude oil transportation that highlights how railroads generate option value by: (1) giving shippers the ability to flexibly increase or decrease volumes shipped in response to price shocks; and (2) allowing shippers to opportunistically send oil to multiple destinations. In contrast, pipelines have low amortized costs but lock shippers into debt-like ship-or-pay contracts to a single destination. We calibrate this model to the recently constructed Dakota Access Pipeline and find that the elasticity of pipeline capacity to railroad transportation costs lies between 0.24 and 0.61, depending on parameters such as the upstream oil supply elasticity. These values are likely conservative because they neglect economies of scale in pipeline construction and the presence of cost-saving contracting in rail. Our results imply that crude-by-rail is an economically significant long-run substitute for pipeline transportation and that regulatory policies targeting environmental and accident externalities from rail transportation would likely substantially affect pipeline investments. |
| JEL: | L13 L71 L95 |
| Date: | 2017–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23855&r=tre |
| By: | Muehlenbachs, Lucija (Resources for the Future, Washington DC); Staubli, Stefan (University of Calgary); Chu, Ziyan (Resources for the Future, Washington DC) |
| Abstract: | How much risk does a heavy truck impose on highway safety? To answer this question, we look at the rapid influx of trucks during the shale gas boom in Pennsylvania. Using quasi-experimental variation in truck traffic, we isolate the effect of adding a truck to the road. We find an additional truck raises the risk of a truck accident – and, at an even higher rate, the risk of nontruck accidents. These accidents pose an external cost in cases in which the truck is not found liable, not fully insured, or not directly involved. We show this external cost is capitalized in the insurance market: car insurance premiums of other road users increase when trucks are added to the road. |
| Keywords: | externality, trucking, hydraulic fracturing, traffic fatalities |
| JEL: | G22 H23 I18 Q58 R41 |
| Date: | 2017–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10989&r=tre |
| By: | Qiu, Wanling; Rudkin, Simon; Sharma, Abhijit |
| Abstract: | Low cost carriers (budget airlines) have a significant share of the air travel market, but little research has been done to understand the distributional effect of their operation on key tourism indicators such as length of stay and expenditure. Using data on European visitors to the United Kingdom we demonstrate how counterfactual decompositions can inform us of the true impact of mode of travel. Passengers on low cost carriers tend to spend less, particularly at the upper end of the distribution. Budget airline users typically stay longer, though differences in characteristics of observed groups are important to this result. Counterfactual techniques provide additional valuable insights not obtained from conventional econometric models used in the literature. Illustrating an application of the methodology to policy we demonstrate that enabling respondents to extend their stay generates the greatest additional expenditure at the lower end of the distribution. We also show nationality is a significant characteristic, with important impacts across the expenditure distribution. |
| Keywords: | low cost carriers, tourist expenditure, counterfactual decomposition |
| JEL: | R4 R41 |
| Date: | 2017–09–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:81428&r=tre |
| By: | Christian Desmaris (LAET - Laboratoire Aménagement Économie Transports - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - École Nationale des Travaux Publics de l'État [ENTPE] - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, IEP Lyon - Sciences Po Lyon - Institut d'études politiques de Lyon) |
| Abstract: | The European railway industry continues to undergo reform and liberalization due to European law incentives. Recent events in Italy give the country a special place in this process: a new competitor has commenced operations in the high-speed rail (HSR) market based on a private initiative. This paper aims to investigate this rail transport innovation looking for the driving forces and obstacles and to identify the main impacts for the Italian consumers. We also try to provide some interesting results helpful for other countries regarding passenger rail reforms. Based on the Italian case, it seems that open access competition in the HSR market is able to produce significant improvements in favour of passengers and also a ‘win-win’ game between all railway actors. |
| Keywords: | high-speed rail (HSR),Competition,Italy,Railway Reform,impacts for the Italian consumers |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01370373&r=tre |
| By: | James Archsmith; Kenneth Gillingham; Christopher R. Knittel; David S. Rapson |
| Abstract: | Household preferences for goods with a bundle of attributes may have complex substitution patterns when one attribute is changed. For example, a household faced with an exogenous increase in the size of one television may choose to decrease the size of other televisions within the home. This paper quantifies the extent of attribute substitution in the context of multi-vehicle households. We deploy a novel identification strategy to examine how an exogenous change in the fuel economy of a kept vehicle affects a household's choice of a second vehicle. We find strong evidence of attribute substitution in the household vehicle portfolio. This effect operates through car attributes that are correlated with fuel economy, including vehicle footprint and weight. Our findings suggest that attribute substitution exerts a strong force that may erode a substantial portion of the expected future gasoline savings from fuel economy standards, particularly those that are attribute-based. Elements of our identification strategy are relevant to a broad class of settings in which consumers make sequential purchases of durable portfolio goods. |
| JEL: | L62 R41 |
| Date: | 2017–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23856&r=tre |
| By: | Trivikram Dokka Venkata Satyanaraya; Fabrice Talla Nobibon; Sonali Sen Gupta; Alain Zemkoho |
| Abstract: | We study a robust toll pricing problem where toll setters and users have different level of information when taking their decisions. Toll setters do not have full information on the costs of the network and rely on historical information when determining toll rates, whereas users decide on the path to use from origin to destination knowing toll rates and having, in addition, more accurate traffic data. In this work, we first consider a single origin-destination parallel network and formulate the robust toll pricing problem as a distributionally robust optimization problem, for which we develop an exact algorithm based on a mixed-integer programming formulation and a heuristic based on two-point support distribution. We further extend our formulations to more general networks and show how our algorithms can be adapted for the general networks. Finally, we illustrate the usefulness of our approach by means of numerical experiments both on randomly generated networks and on the road network of the city of Chicago. |
| Keywords: | Toll-pricing, Conditional value at risk, Robust optimization |
| JEL: | C61 C63 D80 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lan:wpaper:194217799&r=tre |
| By: | Karen Clay; Akshaya Jha; Nicholas Muller; Randall Walsh |
| Abstract: | This paper constructs new estimates of the air pollution and greenhouse gas costs from long-distance movement of petroleum products by rail and pipelines. While crude oil transportation has generated intense policy debate about rail and pipeline spills and accidents, important externalities – air pollution and greenhouse gas costs – have been largely overlooked. Using data for crude oil transported out of North Dakota in 2014, this paper finds that air pollution and greenhouse gas costs are nearly twice as large for rail as for pipelines. Moreover, our estimates of air pollution and greenhouse gas costs are much larger than estimates of spill and accidents costs. In particular, they are more than twice as big for rail and more than eight times as big for pipelines. Our findings indicate that the policy debate surrounding crude oil transportation has put too much relative weight on accidents and spills, while overlooking a far more serious source of external cost: air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. |
| JEL: | L92 Q53 Q54 |
| Date: | 2017–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23852&r=tre |
| By: | Carole Donada (ESSEC Business School - Essec Business School); Yannick Perez (UP11 - Université Paris-Sud - Paris 11) |
| Abstract: | A recent study from the Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden Württemberg (ZSW), reports that in early 2015 over 740,000 electric cars were on the road throughout the world. This is a drop in the ocean compared to the 74 million ICE cars sold last year. However, latest statistics on the sale of electric cars indicate that the market is booming with no less 320,000 vehicles registered in one year, as well as an exponential growth rate of sales worldwide.These results came as no surprise to researchers from the Armand Peugeot Chair, who held the Second International Conference in Paris in December 2014. A previous issue of the International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management (‘Electromobility challenging issues’, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2015) called attention to the fact that the emergence of electromobility has generated three critical challenges for the markets, the industrial processes and the business models of the traditional automotive industry. More specifically, it discussed issues regarding innovation and service transition, issues regarding grid-integration and service-aggregator actions, and lastly issues regarding supportive public policies (Donada and Perez, 2015). How have these challenges evolved one year later, a year during which this new electromobility industry has been booming? This special edition presents five emblematic researches on the issues raised during the sessions of this 2014 conference. |
| Keywords: | Editorial, Electromobility. |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01424641&r=tre |
| By: | Sebastian J. Dietz; Philipp Kneringer; Georg J. Mayr; Achim Zeileis |
| Abstract: | Low-visibility conditions at airports can lead to capacity reductions and therefore to delays or cancelations of arriving and departing flights. Accurate visibility forecasts are required to keep the airport capacity as high as possible. We generate probabilistic nowcasts of low-visibility procedure (lvp) states, which determine the reduction of the airport capacity due to low-visibility. The nowcasts are generated with tree-based statistical models based on highly-resolved meteorological observations at the airport. Short computation times of these models ensure the instantaneous generation of new predictions when new observations arrive. The tree-based ensemble method "boosting" provides the highest benefit in forecast performance. For lvp forecasts with lead times shorter than one hour variables with information of the current lvp state, ceiling, and horizontal visibility are most important. With longer lead times visibility information of the airport's vicinity, humidity, and climatology also becomes relevant. |
| Keywords: | aviation meteorology, visibility, nowcast, decision tree, bagging, random forest, boosting |
| Date: | 2017–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inn:wpaper:2017-22&r=tre |
| By: | Kevin R. Williams (Cowles Foundation, Yale University) |
| Abstract: | Airfares are determined by both intertemporal price discrimination and dynamic adjustment to stochastic demand. I estimate a model of dynamic airline pricing accounting for both forces with new flight-level data. With model estimates, I disentangle key interactions between the arrival pattern of consumer types and remaining capacity under stochastic demand. I show that the forces are complements in airline markets and lead to significantly higher revenues, as well as increased consumer surplus, compared to a more restrictive pricing regime. Finally, I show that abstracting from stochastic demand leads to a systematic bias in estimating demand elasticities. |
| Keywords: | Dynamic pricing, Intertemporal price discrimination, Price discrimination, Stochastic demand, Pricing, Airlines, Dynamic discrete choice |
| JEL: | L11 L12 L93 |
| Date: | 2017–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:3003&r=tre |
| By: | Mogens Fosgerau; Emerson Melo; Andre de Palma; Matthew Shum |
| Abstract: | This paper establishes a general equivalence between discrete choice and rational inattention models. Matejka and McKay (2015, AER) showed that when information costs are modelled using the Shannon entropy function, the resulting choice probabilities in the rational inattention model take the multinomial logit form. By exploiting convex-analytic properties of the discrete choice model, we show that when information costs are modelled using a class of generalized entropy functions, the choice probabilities in any rational inattention model are observationally equivalent to some additive random utility discrete choice model and vice versa. Thus any additive random utility model can be given an interpretation in terms of boundedly rational behavior. This includes empirically relevant specifications such as the probit and nested logit models. |
| Date: | 2017–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1709.09117&r=tre |
| By: | Laetitia Dablanc (IFSTTAR/AME/SPLOTT - Systèmes Productifs, Logistique, Organisation des Transports et Travail - IFSTTAR - Institut Français des Sciences et Technologies des Transports, de l'Aménagement et des Réseaux - Communauté Université Paris-Est); Eléonora Morganti (University of Leeds); Niklas Arvidsson (RISE Research Institutes of Sweden); Johan Woxenius (GU - University of Gothenburg); Michael Browne (GU - University of Gothenburg); Neila Saidi (École d'architecture de la ville et des territoires de Marne-la-Vallée) |
| Abstract: | This exploratory paper contributes to a new body of research that investigates the potential of digital market places to disrupt transport and mobility services. We are specifically looking at the urban freight sector, where numerous app-based services have emerged in recent years. The paper specifically looks at 'instant deliveries,' i.e. services providing on-demand delivery within two hours - by either private individuals, independent contractors, or employees - by connecting consignors, couriers and consignees via a digital platform. The paper provides an overview of the main issues concerning instant deliveries, supported by data (including a survey of 96 courier delivery providers) and examples. After presenting a typology of companies (digital platforms) involved in 'instant deliveries,' we question in what way they transform the urban freight current patterns. We highlight four issues, discussing their potential to impact urban freight services and related policies in European cities: 1) Freight trips and data; 2) Business models; 3) Labor legislation and work conditions; and 4) Local public policies. We conclude by saying that predicting the medium-term consequences of these changes is difficult, but it is essential that city planning and policies take account of these developments and consider how planning and possibly regulation needs to be adapted to these new ways of doing things. |
| Keywords: | ON DEMAND DELIVERY,INSTANT DELIVERY,LIVRAISON INSTANTANEE,CROWDSHIPPING,SMART MOBILITY,LOGISTIQUE,ZONE URBAINE |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01589316&r=tre |
| By: | Huberman, Gur; Leshno, Jacob; Moalleni, Ciamac |
| Abstract: | Owned by nobody and controlled by an almost immutable protocol the Bitcoin payment system is a platform with two main constituencies: users and profit seeking miners who maintain the system's infrastructure. The paper seeks to understand the economics of the system: How does the system raise revenue to pay for its infrastructure? How are usage fees determined? How much infrastructure is deployed? What are the implications of changing parameters in the protocol? A simplified economic model that captures the system's properties answers these questions. Transaction fees and infrastructure level are determined in an equilibrium of a congestion queueing game derived from the system's limited throughput. The system eliminates dead-weight loss from monopoly, but introduces other inefficiencies and requires congestion to raise revenue and fund infrastructure. We explore the future potential of such systems and provide design suggestions. |
| Keywords: | Bitcoin; blockchain; cryptocurrency; market design; queueing; Two-sided markets |
| JEL: | D20 D40 L10 L50 |
| Date: | 2017–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12322&r=tre |
| By: | Kristina Setyowati (Social and Political Sciences Faculty, Sebelas Maret University, Indonesia. Author-2-Name: Tya Astriyani Author-2-Workplace-Name: Social and Political Sciences Faculty, Sebelas Maret University, Indonesia.) |
| Abstract: | "Objective – The objective of research was to determine the intergovernmental relation in public transport services. It also aims to identify the inter-governmental Relation in the service of Batik Solo Trans viewed from the cooperation type, the cooperation process and examined using three aspects: sharing of benefits, sharing of burden and sharing of experience. Methodology/Technique – The research method was qualitative descriptive one with interview and documentation as the technique of collecting data. The sampling technique used was purposive sampling on. Data validation was carried out using method triangulation and data analysis using an interactive data analysis. Findings – Considering the result of research, it could be found that the type of inter- Governmental Relation in BST Service was the collective agreement without certain pact document. The cooperation process was done in coordinative manner. The cooperation showed the existence of benefit sharing between the areas involved. Besides, cooperation was also used as the media of sharing experiences, but it didn’t show the distribution of responsibility. Novelty – The study recommends that there should be an agreement document specifically governing the intergovernmental cooperation in BST service, enabling the sharing of burdens so that the cooperation can be proposed with the distribution of responsibility between the areas involved." |
| Keywords: | Inter-Regional Relation; Cooperation; Public Transport Service, City Bus. |
| JEL: | O18 O31 |
| Date: | 2017–07–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gtr:gatrjs:jmmr164&r=tre |
| By: | Philipp Kneringer; Sebastian J. Dietz; Georg J. Mayr; Achim Zeileis |
| Abstract: | Airport operations are sensitive to visibility conditions. Low-visibility events may lead to capacity reduction, delays and economic losses. Different levels of low-visibility procedures (lvp) are enacted to ensure aviation safety. A nowcast of the probabilities for each of the lvp categories helps decision makers to optimally schedule their operations. An ordered logistic regression (OLR) model is used to forecast these probabilities directly. It is applied to cold season forecasts at Vienna International Airport for lead times of 30-min out to two hours. Model inputs are standard meteorological measurements. The skill of the forecasts is accessed by the ranked probability score. OLR outperforms persistence, which is a strong contender at the shortest lead times. The ranked probability score of the OLR is even better than the one of nowcasts from human forecasters. The OLR-based nowcasting system is computationally fast and can be updated instantaneously when new data become available. |
| Keywords: | aviation meteorology, low visibility, probabilistic nowcasting, statistical forecasts, ordered logistic regression |
| Date: | 2017–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inn:wpaper:2017-21&r=tre |