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on Transport Economics |
| By: | Cosar,Ahmet Kerem |
| Abstract: | Poor infrastructure and high domestic shipping costs are often cited as important impediments toeconomic activity in developing countries. Domestic shipping being mostly overland, understanding the level and structureof costs in road freight transportation could thus help formulate policies that aim to lower them. This reviewprovides a summary of overland transport cost estimates with a focus on trucking, the dominant mode of domestic freight.By describing conceptual issues, highlighting sources of data and alternative methodologies with their key findings,it is intended to help practitioners and researchers navigate the literature. |
| Date: | 2022–08–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10156&r= |
| By: | He,Yiyi; Maruyama Rentschler,Jun Erik; Avner,Paolo; Gao,Jianxi; Yue,Xiangyu; Radke,John |
| Abstract: | This study provides the first global evaluation of both direct and indirect flood hazard impactson road transportation networks. It constructs topological road networks for 2,564 human settlements, representing over14 million kilometers of urban roads. It assesses their exposure to pluvial and fluvial flood risks under 10scenarios, corresponding to different flood intensities (1:5 year to 1:1,000 year return periods). Under each scenario,the study analyzes direct infrastructure exposure and assesses the indirect effects of flood-induced mobilitydisruptions: route failures, travel delays, and travel distance increases. The results document a positiverelationship between flood return period and flood impact (both direct and indirect). Compared with direct floodhazard exposure, the indirect impact of floods on mobility is more prominent and heterogeneous. The average share ofthe road network that is flooded by at least 0.3 meters is 3.64 percent (or 24.84 percent) under the 5-year (or1,000-year) return period, yet 11.58 percent (or 65.67 percent) of the simulated trips fail in the same scenario.The results enable comparisons of exposure and vulnerability of road networks to flood hazards across countries, allowingthe identification and prioritization of urban transport resilience measures. |
| Date: | 2022–05–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10049&r= |
| By: | Iimi,Atsushi |
| Abstract: | Large-scale transport infrastructure investment can facilitate structural transformation bychanging firm behavior. Although its impact is evident over the long term, an important empirical challenge is potentialendogeneity of infrastructure placement. By using the dynamic panel data regression, the paper examines theimpacts of massive road corridor investment under the Nurly Zhol program in Kazakhstan. The paper takes advantage ofdetailed micro shipping data to capture historical changes in transport connectivity over the past 10 years. While theaverage travel speed has slightly increased, transport costs have been nearly halved. The estimated translog costfunctions indicate that local market accessibility is the most important factor to boost firm productivity. Theelasticity was 0.24 in absolute terms. Inventory is found to be a major cost factor for firms. It is found that a10-percent improvement in accessibility to large cities, such as Astana and Almaty, could allow firms to reduce theirinventory by 8.7 percent. The market accessibility is found to foster firm agglomerations, but agglomeration economiesdo not seem to translate into higher firm productivity. This is possibly because the Kazakh economy still lacks effectiveforward or backward linkages across industries. |
| Date: | 2022–09–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10196&r= |
| By: | HIBIKI Akira; SHINKUMA Takayoshi; YOSHIDA Jun |
| Abstract: | When autonomous driving vehicles, which are currently under development, become widespread in society, liability for accidents and the amount of damage caused will be attributed solely to vehicle performance. For this reason, there are two possible solutions to accidents: a damage liability rule and a product liability rule. Shavell (2020) focuses on the decision-making of automobile drivers under a damage liability rule and found that strict liability rules do not optimize car use and development of the technology for safety performance and thus in order to achieve the first best solution, he proposes a new liability rule (hereafter referred to as the Shavell rule) where parties bear their own damages and pay the government for the victim’s damage. This study extended his model to take into account the development of the technology for safety performance by firms. Our main findings are (1) when the utility function is the same across individuals, the safety performance that is developed under the Shavell rule would be excessive, and a vehicle purchase tax based on safety performance or a technology development tax should be introduced to discourage the excessive incentive to develop the technology, (2) in the case where fair premium damage insurance is available and the premium is determined based on automobile use, the same policy as is in (1) needs to be introduced, (3) when the utility function is different among individuals, the incentives to develop the technology may need to be strengthened by a vehicle purchase subsidy based on safety performance or a technology development subsidy in some cases, (4) Under a product liability rule, the vehicle-use tax and a technology development subsidy need to be implemented. |
| Date: | 2022–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:rdpsjp:22035&r= |
| By: | Aparajita Dasgupta (Ashoka University); Anahita Karandikar (University of British Columbia); Devvrat Raghav (Ashoka University) |
| Abstract: | Expansion in access to public infrastructure can have varied, micro-level impacts. In this paper, we use quasi-random access to rural paved roads through a large-scale road-construction program in India to study how road access impacts fertility decisions and investments in child health. We find that increased access to paved roads at the district-level leads to a rise in fertility, improved investments in children—measured through breastfeeding duration and immunization—and lower infant mortality. We also investigate the potential labor market mechanisms that drive these effects, and heterogeneity in the impacts by plausibly exogenous variation in levels of female labor force participation (FLFP). We find that in districts with erstwhile lower levels of FLFP, the effects on fertility and child health are driven by paved road access causing women to drop out of the labour force, while men shift from unpaid work to paid work. On the other hand, in districts with higher FLFP due to women’s involvement in agriculture, we find that the increase in fertility can be explained by women substituting away from (paid) employment towards full-time domestic work. |
| Keywords: | Healthcare; Fertility; mortality; Gender norms; Infrastructure; Labour markets |
| Date: | 2022–10–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ash:wpaper:86&r= |
| By: | Marion Drut (CESAER - Centre d'Economie et de Sociologie Rurales Appliquées à l'Agriculture et aux Espaces Ruraux - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - Institut Agro Dijon - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement) |
| Date: | 2022–07–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03771891&r= |
| By: | Dasgupta,Kunal; Grover,Arti Goswami |
| Abstract: | The spatial distribution of economic activity is known to depend on trade costs, bothinternational and domestic. This paper examines the interplay between these external and internal trade costsusing a model of trade and production that is tested with the organized manufacturing sector data for India from 1989to 2009. The analysis establishes that the trade liberalization episode of the early 1990s helped spreadmanufacturing away from the primary region (districts closest to ports) to the secondary region between 1994 and2000. Such dispersion of activity away from the primary to the secondary region was driven by high internal trade coststhat insulated manufacturers from import competition. This trend reversed post-2000, a period of massive decline ininternal trade costs, attributed to the Golden Quadrilateral highway upgrades. During this period, the districts alongthe highway network in the secondary region gained market access and manufacturing activity, while those off thenetwork lost. Irrespective of the period, or the nature of trade costs, manufacturing activity in the interior region(districts farthest from ports) remained depressed, thereby emphasizing the importance of complementary conditions indriving territorial development. |
| Date: | 2022–05–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10066&r= |
| By: | Lall,Somik V.; Sinha Roy,Sutirtha; Shilpi,Forhad J. |
| Abstract: | This paper uses data on nearly half a million actual shipments from a trucking portal in India toprovide evidence on how trucking costs depend on route characteristics and affect the intensive and extensivemargins of shipment flows. The empirical analysis using pre-pandemic data (before March 24, 2020) confirms thepresence of thick market externalities along a route and spillovers across routes due to network externalities, bothof which confer advantages to origins and destinations with larger market sizes. The paper utilizes exogenous variationsin value-added tax on gasoline across states to provide causal estimates of the elasticity of shipment flows withrespect to trucking costs. The empirical estimates suggest that a 1 percent increase in trucking unit costs reducestrade flows by 2.8–3.9 percent. On the extensive margin of trade, three eastern states and several smaller territoriesconstitute isolated regions that were largely cut off from the trading networks during the pre-pandemic period.Trucking costs increased by 32 percent during the early post-lockdown period (June 2020 to February 2021). Theincrease was greater along longer routes. In the short run, the increase in freight rates led to a proportionatedecrease in trade flows across states. It pushed a significant number of poorer and remoter states into theranks of isolated regions. |
| Date: | 2022–05–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10059&r= |