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on Transport Economics |
| By: | Stephen Gibbons; Stephan Heblich; Ted Pinchbeck |
| Abstract: | Transport investment is a popular policy instrument and many recent studies have investigated whether new infrastructure generates economic benefits and has spatial economic impacts. Our work approaches the question differently and looks at what happens when a substantial part of a national railway network is dismantled, as happened during the 1950s, 60s and 70s in Britain. Part of this disinvestment occurred following controversial reports on railway profitability and structure in the early 1960s - a course of action known colloquially as 'the Beeching Axe' after the author of the reports. The removal of railways is often blamed for the decline of rural areas and peripheral towns in post-war Britain. This rail disinvestment program was targeted at removal of underused and unprofitable lines and not specifically targeted at local economic performance. Even so, we find that there is a relationship between pre-war population decline and the depth of the rail cuts in the post 1950 period. Conditional on these pre-trends, we show that loss of access by rail did cause relative population decline, decline in the proportion of skilled workers, and decline in the proportion of young people in affected areas. The elasticity of population with respect to changes in centrality (or market access) is around 0.3 in our main estimates. Instrumental variables estimates based on the network structure of the cuts yield higher elasticities. An implication of these findings is that rail transport infrastructure plays an important role in shaping the spatial structure of the economy. |
| Keywords: | rail, infrastructure, Beeching |
| JEL: | H54 R1 R4 |
| Date: | 2018–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1563&r=tre |
| By: | Filippo Elba; Fiammetta Cosci; Anna Pettini; Federico M. Stefanini |
| Abstract: | The 2016 report of the European Transport Safety Council claims that EU safety progress has come to a standstill. This study aims at deepening the knowledge of factors that influence adolescents’ risky behavior on the road. Bayesian Networks offer a promising new way to looking at the issue. In the analysis of a dataset collected in Tuscany, Italy, called EDIT, we found evidence that the use of alcohol and illegal substances explain only part of the probability of having an accident, and that other observable variables, like the level of distress or the type of school attended are significantly related to the probability of incurring in a road crash. New and close attention should be given to a systemic approach and to a plethora of environmental and individual variables that may rise the probability of road accidents for very young drivers. |
| Keywords: | Bayesian Networks, structural learning, road accidents, distress factors, risky behavior, adolescence, youth, novice drivers |
| JEL: | C11 D91 I11 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7144&r=tre |
| By: | Klößner, Stefan; Pfeifer, Gregor |
| Abstract: | We examine the impact of the EUR 5 billion German Cash-for-Clunkers program on vehicle registrations and respective CO2 emissions. To construct proper counterfactuals, we develop the multivariate synthetic control method using time series of economic predictors (MSCMT) and show (asymptotic) unbiasedness of the corresponding effect estimator under quite general conditions. Using cross-validation for determining an optimal specification of predictors, we do not find significant effects for CO2 emissions, while the stimulus’ impact on vehicle sales is strongly positive. Modeling different buyer subgroups, we disentangle this effect: 530,000 purchases were simply windfall gains; 550,000 were pulled forward; and 850,000 vehicles would not have been purchased in absence of the subsidy, worth EUR 17 billion. |
| Keywords: | Generalized Synthetic Controls; Cross-Validation; Cash-for-Clunkers; CO2 Emissions |
| JEL: | C31 C32 C52 D04 D12 H23 H24 L62 Q51 |
| Date: | 2018–07–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:88175&r=tre |
| By: | Stephen Gibbons; Daniel J. Graham |
| Abstract: | This paper is concerned with the Wider Economic Impacts (WEIs) of transport improvements that arise via scale economies of agglomeration. It reviews the background theory and empirical evidence on agglomeration, explains the link between transport and agglomeration, and describes a three step procedure to appraise agglomeration impacts for transport schemes within Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA). The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for future empirical work on agglomeration and transport appraisal. |
| Keywords: | agglomeration, transport, cost benefit analysis |
| JEL: | R1 R4 |
| Date: | 2018–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1561&r=tre |
| By: | Gregory Galay (Department of Economics and Finance, University of Guelph, Guelph ON Canada); Henry Thille (Department of Economics and Finance, University of Guelph, Guelph ON Canada) |
| Abstract: | From 2011 until the end of 2014, a larger than normal price spread emerged between West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Western Canadian Select (WCS). This led many participants in Canada’s energy sector to advocate for the expansion of Canada’s crude oil pipeline system as they believed that excess supply could not be moved from production regions in Northern Alberta to those markets that would yield the highest return. This article considers the impact constrained transportation capacity has on the price spread between WCS and other world prices such as WTI. A Markov-switching model is used to identify regimes associated with binding/non-binding pipeline capacity. Our results confirm the predictions of models of spatial arbitrage under capacity constraints. When there is sufficient transportation capacity the price spreads reflect transport costs (includes fees, insurance, etc.) plus any premium for the quality difference between the crude oils compared. However, during periods of tight capacity the spread becomes more volatile and on average exceeds transport costs plus the quality premium. We compare our results to newly available pipeline data and find that periods of tight capacity as identified through the price data are substantially fewer than that suggested by the pipeline capacity data. |
| Keywords: | Crude oil prices, spatial pricing, pipeline congestion, Markov-switching autoregression |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gue:guelph:2018-04&r=tre |
| By: | Corrado Giulietti (University of Southampton; Centre for Population Change; Global Labor Organization); Mirco Tonin (Free University of Bolzano‐Bozen, CESifo; Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics and Public Policy, Bocconi University); Michael Vlassopoulos (University of Southampton; IZA) |
| Abstract: | The stock market in uences some of the most fundamental economic decisions of investors, such as consumption, saving, and labor supply, through the financial wealth channel. This paper provides evidence that daily uctuations in the stock market have important-and hitherto neglected-spillover effects in another, unrelated domain, namely driving. Using the universe of fatal road car accidents in the United States from 1990 to 2015, we find that a one standard deviation reduction in daily stock market returns is associated with a 0.5% increase in the number of fatal accidents. A battery of falsification tests support a causal interpretation of this finding. Our results are consistent with immediate emotions stirred by a negative stock market performance in uencing the number of fatal accidents, in particular among inexperienced investors, thus highlighting the broader economic and social consequences of stock market uctuations. |
| Keywords: | Stock market, Car accidents, Emotions |
| JEL: | D91 R41 |
| Date: | 2018–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bzn:wpaper:bemps52&r=tre |
| By: | Gerda Dewit (Department of Economics, Finance and Accounting, Maynooth University.); Dermot Leahy (Department of Economics, Finance and Accounting, Maynooth University.) |
| Abstract: | We examine optimal policy of a host developing country towards a foreign firm that can provide local infrastructure. In the main model, two types of infrastructural goods, one provided by the foreign firm and the other by a publicly owned firm, are complementary inputs for a domestic competitive final goods sector. We show that, due to strategic interaction between the infrastructure providers, average-cost pricing, though inferior for the consumer, is superior to marginal-cost pricing from an overall welfare perspective. In addition, when the home firm maximises profit, domestic surplus is maximised, but the domestic consumer loses from this. |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:may:mayecw:n290-18.pdf&r=tre |
| By: | Fujii, Hidemichi; Iwata, Kazuyuki; Chapman, Andrew; Kagawa, Shigemi; Managi, Shunsuke |
| Abstract: | This study analyzed the relationship between urban CO2 emissions and economic growth applying the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis. The objective of this study is to investigate how urban CO2 emissions and their composition have changed with urban economic growth, depending on city characteristics, using a dataset of metropolitan areas. We obtained data for 276 cities in 26 countries for the years 2000, 2005, and 2008. The dataset includes urban CO2 emissions, GDP, and population. Additionally, data regarding compact city variables are applied to determinants analysis using an econometric approach. The results demonstrate an inverted U-shape relationship between urban CO2 emissions and urban economic growth. Additionally, an inverted U-shape relationship is observed for the transport and residential & industry sectors. However, the turning points of each inverted U-shape curve varies. This result implies that we can better understand urban policies for reducing urban CO2 emissions by considering the characteristics of each sector. |
| Keywords: | urban CO2 emissions, environmental Kuznets curve, compact city, metropolitan area |
| JEL: | O18 Q54 Q56 R00 |
| Date: | 2018–07–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:87859&r=tre |