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on Transport Economics |
| By: | Bernhardt, A.; Melo, Teresa; Bousonville, Thomas; Kopfer, Herbert |
| Abstract: | Fuel is one main cost driver in the road haulage sector. An analysis of diesel price variations across different European countries showed that a significant potential for cutting fuel expenditure can be found in international long-haul freight transportation. Here, truck drivers are often on the road for several consecutive days or even weeks. During their trips, they must comply with the rules on driving hours and rest periods which in the European Union are governed by Regulation (EC) No 561/2006. In the literature, refueling problems have attracted limited attention so far. In the present study, we show why a joint consideration of drivers' rest periods and breaks and refueling is important and how the choice of time windows, the planning of driver activities, and the determination of refueling stops and quantities can be done accordingly. For a given sequence of customer locations and gas stations with different fuel prices along the route chosen to serve these customers we propose a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model and describe the corresponding solution process. In this multicriteria optimization problem with the goals to minimize lateness, traveling time and fuel expenditures, we consider multiple soft time windows at customer locations. We extend the MILP model developed by Bernhardt et al. (2016) by integrating refueling decisions. Additionally, a preprocessing heuristic is described which reduces the number of gas stations to be considered along the route and thus the solution space and the computational effort. Numerical experiments were conducted for instances derived from real data that include vehicle routes for one week and information on gas stations along the vehicle routes. Different parameter settings for the preprocessing heuristic were analyzed. |
| Keywords: | road transportation,refueling,fuel cost,driver scheduling,rest periods,breaks,driving hours,Regulation (EC) No 561/2006,mixed integer linear programming models |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:htwlog:14&r=tre |
| By: | Yin, Hang (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University) |
| Abstract: | We estimate the value of travel time savings with a discrete choice model using data from choice experiments on both car drivers and public transport users in Beijing. We find that, compared with public transport users, car drivers would be willing to pay more to save one hour during their commute; crowding inside the bus and subway carriage is very important for public transport users; the value of time saving is higher in the morning than in the evening; and the marginal willingness to pay for commuting time savings varies according to gender, income, education, and time flexibility. Moreover, we compare results from a model addressing attribute non-attendance and a standard model. The results from the model addressing non-attendance are more plausible, with higher consistency in estimated parameters and lower standard deviations. |
| Keywords: | Value of commuting time; attribute non-attendance; preference heterogeneity |
| JEL: | C25 R41 |
| Date: | 2018–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0726&r=tre |
| By: | Kenneth Gillingham; Anders Munk-Nielsen |
| Abstract: | Pricing greenhouse gases is widely understood as the most efficient approach for mitigating climate change, yet distributional effects hamper political acceptance. These distributional effects are especially important in transport, the fastest growing sector for greenhouse gas emissions. Using rich data covering the entire population of vehicles and households in Denmark, this study uncovers an important feature of driving demand: two groups of much more responsive households in the lower and upper tails of the work distance distribution. We further estimate the causal effect of public transport–a critical determinant of the upper tail–and show how public transport access can both reconcile differences in fuel price elasticities between the United States and Europe, and considerably influence the distributional effects of fuel pricing. |
| Keywords: | transportation, distributional effects, urban form, environmental taxes |
| JEL: | L90 R40 Q40 N70 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6792&r=tre |
| By: | Geir H. M. Bjertnaes |
| Abstract: | A tax on fuel combined with tax-exemptions or subsidies for purchase of fuel-efficient vehicles is implemented in many countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other negative externalities from road traffic. This study, however, shows that a tax on fuel should be combined with heavier taxation of fuel-efficient vehicles to curb externalities from road traffic. The tax on fuel is implemented to curb externalities linked to both consumption of fuel and road use. The heavier tax on fuel-efficient vehicles prevents that motorists avoid the road user charge on fuel by purchasing fuel-efficient vehicles. |
| Keywords: | transportation, optimal taxation, environmental taxation, global warming |
| JEL: | H20 H21 H23 Q58 R48 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6789&r=tre |
| By: | Yuichiro Matsumoto (Osaka University) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how transport costs affect wage inequality. Goods produced by the unskilled must pay higher transport costs because they have low market values. Reduction in transportation cost changes the relative wage. At first, only the skilled gains from the transportation improvement. Then the unskilled also gains from international trade. Therefore, transportation development causes Kuznets curve. |
| Keywords: | Alchian-Allen Hypothesis; Kuznets Curve; Trade Liberalization; Transportation Infrastructure; Wage Inequality |
| JEL: | F16 J31 L91 O11 R1 |
| Date: | 2018–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osk:wpaper:1807&r=tre |
| By: | Gabriel E. Lade (Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD)); James Bushnell |
| Abstract: | The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) is among the largest renewable energy mandates in the world. The policy is enforced using tradeable credits that implicitly subsidize biofuels and tax fossil fuels. The RFS relies on these taxes and subsidies to be passed through to consumers to stimulate demand for biofuels and decrease demand for gasoline and diesel. Using station-level prices for E85 (a high-ethanol blend fuel) from over 450 retail fuel stations, we show that pass-through of the ethanol subsidy is, on average, complete. However, we find that full pass-through takes four to six weeks and that local market structure of gasoline stations influences both the speed and overall level of pass-through. JEL Codes: Q42, Q58, H23 |
| Keywords: | retail fuel markets, E85, renewable fuel standard, subsidy pass-through |
| Date: | 2016–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ias:cpaper:16-wp570&r=tre |
| By: | Quentin Hoarau; Yannick Perez |
| Abstract: | Photovoltaic generation and electric mobility are both disruptive technologies in the power and transport sectors raising several issues regarding power grids. Precisely, questions about synergistic potentials when combining these two technologies have attracted academics' interest. Recent researches on this topic demonstrate that interactions between photovoltaic generation and electric mobility could decrease the overall burden on power grids, and empower one technology with the others specificities. Indeed, electric vehicles could use photovoltaic energy and benefit from a low-cost and carbon-free electricity to charge. In return, photovoltaic systems would use the bi-directional flexibility of electric vehicles battery to maximize their self-consumption. As these synergies operate, these technologies economic spillovers may improve, stimulating their joint deployment. The objective of this paper is to develop a systematic framework in order to review the different under-lying conditions for synergy as they have been studied in the literature. It appears that this synergy was driven by technical characteristics as well as economic aspects. First, this synergy happens in middle-sized spatial configuration (large workplace buildings and charging station) and less obviously at other scales and in situation of technologically diversified system. Second, if it was poorly studied in the literature, the economic context (cooperation level between stakeholders, regulation and policies...) of interactions between photovoltaic generation and electric mobility is crucial for a successful synergy. Finally, we identify several remaining issues about these conditions that further researches could investigate. |
| Keywords: | Electric Vehicle, Photovoltaic energy, Smart grid |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cec:wpaper:1802&r=tre |
| By: | Ruediger Bachmann; Gabriel Ehrlich; Dimitrije Ruzic |
| Abstract: | This paper uses the 2015 Volkswagen emissions scandal as a natural experiment to provide causal evidence that group reputation externalities matter for firms. Our estimates show statistically and economically significant declines in the U.S. sales and stock returns of, as well as public sentiment towards, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Smart as a result of the Volkswagen scandal. In particular, the scandal reduced the sales of these non-Volkswagen German manufacturers by approximately 76,000 vehicles over the following year, leading to a loss of approximately $3.7 billion of revenue. Volkswagen’s malfeasance materially harmed the group reputation of “German car engineering” in the United States. |
| Keywords: | automobiles, collective reputation, country reputation, difference-in-differences, event study, Google trends, firm reputation, natural experiment, reputation externalities, Twitter sentiment, Volkswagen emissions scandal |
| JEL: | D12 D90 F23 L14 L62 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6805&r=tre |
| By: | Aryal, Gaurab; Ciliberto, Federico; Leyden, Benjamin |
| Abstract: | We investigate whether the top management of all legacy U.S. airlines used their quarterly earnings calls as a mode of communication with other airlines to coordinate output reduction (fewer passenger seats) on competitive routes. We build an original and novel dataset on the public communication content from the earnings calls, and use Natural Language Processing techniques from computational linguistics to parse and code the text from earnings calls by airline executives to measure communication. Then we determine if mentioning terms associated with ``capacity discipline'' is a way to sustain collusion on capacity. The estimates show that when all legacy carriers in a market communicate ``capacity discipline,'' it leads to a substantial reduction in the number of seats offered in the market. We find that the effect is driven entirely by legacy carriers, and also that the reduction is larger in smaller markets. Finally, we leverage our high-dimensional text data to develop novel approaches to implement falsification tests and check conditional exogeneity, and confirm that our finding ---legacy airlines use public communication regarding capacity discipline to collude ---is not spurious. |
| Keywords: | Airlines; Capacity Discipline; Collusion; communication; Text Data |
| JEL: | D22 L12 L41 L68 |
| Date: | 2018–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12730&r=tre |