nep-tre New Economics Papers
on Transport Economics
Issue of 2023‒03‒27
six papers chosen by
Erik Teodoor Verhoef
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

  1. Behavioral acceptance of automated vehicles: The roles of perceived safety concern and current travel behavior By Fatemeh Nazari; Mohamadhossein Noruzoliaee; Abolfazl; Mohammadian
  2. Philippine Air Transport Infrastructure: State, Issues, Government Strategies By Francisco, Kris A.; Lim, Valerie L.
  3. Greening Vehicle Fleets: A structural analysis of scrappage programs during the financial crisis By KITANO Taiju
  4. When we change the clock, does the clock change us? By Patrick Baylis; Severin Borenstein; Edward A. Rubin
  5. Precarity and subcontracting relationships: the case of parcel delivery drivers in France By Pétronille Reme-Harnay
  6. The More You Breath, The Less You Are Safe. The Effect of Air Pollution on Work Accidents By Domenico Depalo; Alessandro Palma

  1. By: Fatemeh Nazari (Kouros); Mohamadhossein Noruzoliaee (Kouros); Abolfazl (Kouros); Mohammadian
    Abstract: With the prospect of next-generation automated mobility ecosystem, the realization of the contended traffic efficiency and safety benefits are contingent upon the demand landscape for automated vehicles (AVs). Focusing on the public acceptance behavior of AVs, this empirical study addresses two gaps in the plethora of travel behavior research on identifying the potential determinants thereof. First, a clear behavioral understanding is lacking as to the perceived concern about AV safety and the consequent effect on AV acceptance behavior. Second, how people appraise the benefits of enhanced automated mobility to meet their current (pre-AV era) travel behavior and needs, along with the resulting impacts on AV acceptance and perceived safety concern, remain equivocal. To fill these gaps, a recursive trivariate econometric model with ordinal-continuous outcomes is employed, which jointly estimates AV acceptance (ordinal), perceived AV safety concern (ordinal), and current annual vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) approximating the current travel behavior (continuous). Importantly, the co-estimation of the three endogenous outcomes allows to capture the true interdependencies among them, net of any correlated unobserved factors that can have common impacts on these outcomes. Besides the classical socio-economic characteristics, the outcome variables are further explained by the latent preferences for vehicle attributes (including vehicle cost, reliability, performance, and refueling) and for existing shared mobility systems. The model estimation results on a stated preference survey in the State of California provide insights into proactive policies that can popularize AVs through gearing towards the most affected population groups, particularly vehicle cost-conscious, safety-concerned, and lower-VMT (such as travel-restrictive) individuals.
    Date: 2023–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2302.12225&r=tre
  2. By: Francisco, Kris A.; Lim, Valerie L.
    Abstract: The air transport sector is important in facilitating economic growth and development. In a country made up of more than 7, 000 islands, air transportation serves as the fastest mode of connectivity within the country and the rest of the world. The direct impact of the air transport sector on the Philippine gross domestic product may appear small at 0.61 percent in 2019, but its enabling role for high-value industries such as trade, manufacturing, and tourism justifies the need to prioritize this sector. Having sufficient, well-functioning, and efficient air transport infrastructure is necessary to ensure maximum benefits to the economy. However, the country’s air transport infrastructure suffers from capacity and technical capability constraints. While the government recognizes the need to improve the country’s air transport infrastructure by providing new airports and improving existing facilities and technical capabilities, time is crucial, and huge investments are needed to catch up with the burgeoning demand for air travel. Comments to this paper are welcome within 60 days from the date of posting. Email publications@pids.gov.ph.
    Keywords: air transport sector;air transport policy;airports
    Date: 2022
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:phd:dpaper:dp_2022-62&r=tre
  3. By: KITANO Taiju
    Abstract: Vehicle scrappage programs (SPs) have been a common policy tool to replace aged and/or fuel-inefficient vehicles with fuel-efficient ones, recently adopted to make national vehicle fleets greener. This study evaluates the impacts of the SPs by examining the Japanese private passenger vehicle market in which the government allocated the second-largest program expenditure during the financial crisis. The evaluation is conducted based on the structural model of oligopolistic competition in the presence of the SP, which is estimated using market-level sales, price, and attribute data for each car model from FY2006 to FY2009. To conduct the structural analysis, this study develops a simple method to estimate the demand side in the presence of the SP, which incorporates data on aggregate program outcomes such as the program expenditure in the estimation of the discrete choice models. Given the estimates of the structural model, I simulate counterfactual outcomes under alternative SP designs and discuss program designs that could cost-effectively improve the environmental quality of vehicle fleets, considering the welfare and fiscal stimulus impacts.
    Date: 2023–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:23014&r=tre
  4. By: Patrick Baylis; Severin Borenstein; Edward A. Rubin
    Abstract: The practice of standardizing the designation of time is a central device for coordinating activities and economic behaviors across individuals. However, there is nearly always conflict between an individual's goals of coordinating activities with others and engaging in those activities at their own preferred time. When time is standardized across large geographic areas, that tension is enhanced, because norms about the "clock times" of activities conflict with adapting to local environmental conditions created by natural or "solar" time. This tension is at the heart of current state and national debates about adopting daylight saving time or switching time zones. We study this conflict by examining how geographic and temporal variation in solar time within time zones affects the timing of a range of common behaviors in the United States. Specifically, we estimate the degree to which people shift their online behavior (through Twitter), their commute (using data from the Census), and their visits to businesses and other establishments (using foot traffic data). We find that, on average, a one-hour shift in the differential between solar time and clock time -- approximately the width of a time zone -- leads to shifting the clock time of behavior by between 9 and 26 minutes. This result shows that while adapting to local environmental factors significantly offsets the differential between solar time and clock time, the behavioral nudge and coordination value of clock time has the larger influence on activity. We also study how the trade-off differs across different activities and population demographics.
    JEL: Q40 Q5
    Date: 2023–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30999&r=tre
  5. By: Pétronille Reme-Harnay (AME-SPLOTT - Systèmes Productifs, Logistique, Organisation des Transports et Travail - Université Gustave Eiffel)
    Abstract: Precarity and subcontracting relationships: the case of parcel delivery drivers in France.
    Keywords: DELIVERY DRIVERS, PRECARITY, PARCEL DELIVERY SECTOR, CHAUFFEURS-LIVREURS, MESSAGERIE, SOUS-TRAITANCE
    Date: 2023–01–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03952214&r=tre
  6. By: Domenico Depalo (Bank of Italy, Labor Market Department); Alessandro Palma (Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI) & CEIS, Università di Roma ‘Tor Vergata’)
    Abstract: We estimate the effect of air pollution on work-related accidents using administrative data from Italy in a setting characterized by strict air pollution and work safety regulations. To address the potential endogeneity due to unobserved productivity shifts and firm-specific pollution sources, we use winter heating rules in highly urbanized areas as a exogenous sources of variation in pollution exposure. We find that a one unit increase in PM10 causes 0.014 additional accidents and 0.0013 additional disabilities. We also explore the theoretical implications of these findings in a setting where firms are risk carriers and fully bear the compensation costs of less severe accidents. We empirically confirm that firms have an incentive to deploy defensive investments also when the risk of accidents derives from external factors, as in the case of air quality. Our back-of-the-enveloped calculation shows that each additional unit in PM10 concentration would increase the total cost of an accident by about 1.7%.
    Keywords: air pollution, workplace safety, work accidents, IV, winter heating
    JEL: I18 J28 J81 Q51 Q53
    Date: 2023–02–25
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rtv:ceisrp:554&r=tre

This nep-tre issue is ©2023 by Erik Teodoor Verhoef. It is provided as is without any express or implied warranty. It may be freely redistributed in whole or in part for any purpose. If distributed in part, please include this notice.
General information on the NEP project can be found at http://nep.repec.org. For comments please write to the director of NEP, Marco Novarese at <director@nep.repec.org>. Put “NEP” in the subject, otherwise your mail may be rejected.
NEP’s infrastructure is sponsored by the School of Economics and Finance of Massey University in New Zealand.