nep-tre New Economics Papers
on Transport Economics
Issue of 2023‒05‒22
ten papers chosen by
Erik Teodoor Verhoef
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

  1. Do residents living in transit-oriented development station catchment areas travel more sustainably? The impacts of life events By Shen, Tonggaochuan; Cheng, Long; Yang, Yongjiang; Deng, Jialin; Jin, Tanhua; Cao, Mengqiu
  2. How Much Do Consumers Value Fuel Cost Savings? Evidence from the Passenger Vehicle Leasing Market By Ankney, Kevin; Leard, Benjamin
  3. How Far Goods Travel: Global Transport and Supply Chains from 1965-2020 By Sharat Ganapati; Woan Foong Wong
  4. Ring road investment, cordon tolling, and urban spatial structure: Formulation and a case study By Zhi-Chun Li; Li Cheng; André de Palma
  5. IS A BONANZA OF ELECTRIC VEHICLE GIFTS ON THE HORIZON? By Jay A. Soled; James Alm
  6. Enhanced multilayer perceptron with feature selection and grid search for travel mode choice prediction By Li Tang; Chuanli Tang; Qi Fu
  7. The Creation and Diffusion of Knowledge: Evidence from the Jet Age By Stefan Pauly; Fernando Stipanicic
  8. Industrial policy for electric vehicle supply chains and the US-EU fight over the Inflation Reduction Act By Chad P. Bown
  9. Measuring the impact of the Covid-19 health crisis on ferries traffic: case of the port of La Goulette located in Tunisia By Ahmed Derbel; Kaies Samet
  10. On suspicious tracks: machine-learning based approaches to detect cartels in railway-infrastructure procurement By Hannes Wallimann; Silvio Sticher

  1. By: Shen, Tonggaochuan; Cheng, Long; Yang, Yongjiang; Deng, Jialin; Jin, Tanhua; Cao, Mengqiu
    Abstract: Transit-oriented development (TOD) is an urban designed model aimed at attracting more sustainable travellers. However, not all TOD projects succeed in maintaining a high rate of sustainable travel behaviour. To examine the impacts of TOD on residents' travel behaviour, this paper applies binary logistic regression to analyse survey data for 1, 298 residents living in the TOD areas in Hangzhou collected in 2020. The results show that socioeconomic characteristics, built environment factors, and travel attitudes play important roles in influencing their travel mode choices. Furthermore, the number of children in households and higher levels of car ownership significantly influence residents' sustainable travel behaviours. However, it appears that only a limited number of factors can convince car users to shift to sustainable modes of travel, such as their workplace being accessible by metro and attitudes towards changes in accessibility. This research study contributes to the existing literature in terms of enhancing the understanding of travel mode choice behaviours, particularly with regard to people who live near public transport infrastructure, as well as formulating evidence-based TOD policies to achieve more sustainable transport systems.
    JEL: J1
    Date: 2023–04–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:118813&r=tre
  2. By: Ankney, Kevin; Leard, Benjamin (Resources for the Future)
    Abstract: Vehicle leasing involves a consumer renting a car for an average of three years. Given the typical lease length, we show that estimating valuation of leased vehicle fuel costs is fundamentally different from estimating valuation of purchased vehicle fuel costs. We find that new vehicle lessees and buyers both undervalue lifetime fuel costs. But because leasing periods last about three years, new vehicle lessees fully value lease-specific fuel costs. Our estimates also imply that leasing companies set residual values, defined as the post-lease expected value of the vehicle, with the expectation that used vehicle buyers undervalue post-lease fuel costs.
    Date: 2021–08–25
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-21-27&r=tre
  3. By: Sharat Ganapati; Woan Foong Wong
    Abstract: This paper considers the evolution of global transportation usage over the past half century and its implications for supply chains. Transportation usage per unit of real output has more than doubled as costs decreased by a third. Participation of emerging economies in world trade and longer-distance trade between countries contribute to this usage increase, thereby encouraging longer supply chains. We discuss technological advances over this period, and their interactions with endogenous responses from transportation costs and supply chain linkages. Supply chains involving more countries and longer distances are reflective of reliable and efficient transportation, but are also more exposed to disruptions, highlighting the importance of considering the interconnectedness of transportation and supply chains in policymaking and future work.
    JEL: F14 F15 L91 R4 R41
    Date: 2023–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31167&r=tre
  4. By: Zhi-Chun Li; Li Cheng; André de Palma (Université de Cergy-Pontoise, THEMA)
    Abstract: Ring roads, as candidate cordon locations, provide an advantageous condition for implementing cordon tolling schemes. This paper presents a methodology for investigating the ring road investment and cordon tolling problems in a congested ring-radial city. A two-dimensional urban system equilibrium for a ring-radial city is first formulated, in which interactions among stakeholders, including the authorities, property developers, households and commuters, are explicitly considered. Two social welfare maximization models for optimizing the ring road investment and cordon tolling schemes, a short-sighted and a far-sighted one, are then proposed. In the short-sighted model, the ring road investment decision is first made, and then the cordon tolling scheme is optimized based on the determined ring road locations as candidate cordons. However, in the far-sighted model, a simultaneous decision of the ring road investment and cordon tolling is made. The proposed models explicitly incorporate the estimation of the intra-area travel. The case study applied to the city network of Chengdu China shows that ring road investment and cordon tolling can reshape the urban spatial structure as a result of the tug-of-war between the dispersion effects due to ring road investment and the concentration effects due to cordon tolling. There is a large difference in the optimal solutions of the far-sighted model and the short-sighted model (e.g., optimal number of cordons). The former is closer to the social optimum than the latter. The optimal multi-cordon tolling scheme outperforms the optimal single-cordon tolling scheme in terms of the social welfare. However, the gap between them is trivial. Ignoring the household residential relocation behavior in the models leads to underestimates of total cordon toll revenue and social welfare gains.
    Keywords: Ring-radial city; ring road investment; cordon tolling; urban spatial structure; urban system equilibrium; social welfare.
    JEL: R13 R14 R41 R42
    Date: 2023
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ema:worpap:2023-07&r=tre
  5. By: Jay A. Soled (Rutgers Business School); James Alm (Tulane University)
    Abstract: The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 has the potential to encourage taxpayers to make automobile-related gifts. However, the genesis of such gift-giving likely will not be due to genuine generosity, but rather will be part of a strategy designed to achieve significant income tax savings.
    Keywords: Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, Internal Revenue Service, electric vehicles, gift tax, tax compliance
    JEL: H0 H2 H26
    Date: 2023–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tul:wpaper:2301&r=tre
  6. By: Li Tang; Chuanli Tang; Qi Fu
    Abstract: Accurate and reliable prediction of individual travel mode choices is crucial for developing multi-mode urban transportation systems, conducting transportation planning and formulating traffic demand management strategies. Traditional discrete choice models have dominated the modelling methods for decades yet suffer from strict model assumptions and low prediction accuracy. In recent years, machine learning (ML) models, such as neural networks and boosting models, are widely used by researchers for travel mode choice prediction and have yielded promising results. However, despite the superior prediction performance, a large body of ML methods, especially the branch of neural network models, is also limited by overfitting and tedious model structure determination process. To bridge this gap, this study proposes an enhanced multilayer perceptron (MLP; a neural network) with two hidden layers for travel mode choice prediction; this MLP is enhanced by XGBoost (a boosting method) for feature selection and a grid search method for optimal hidden neurone determination of each hidden layer. The proposed method was trained and tested on a real resident travel diary dataset collected in Chengdu, China.
    Date: 2023–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2304.12698&r=tre
  7. By: Stefan Pauly (ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Fernando Stipanicic (UC Berkeley - University of California [Berkeley] - UC - University of California)
    Abstract: Click here for the latest version This paper provides new causal evidence of the impact of air travel time on the creation and diffusion of knowledge. We exploit the beginning of the Jet Age as a quasi-natural experiment. We digitize airlines' historical flight schedules and construct a novel data set of the flight network in the United States. Between 1951 and 1966, travel time between locations more than 2, 000 km apart decreased on average by 41%. The reduction in travel time explains 33% of the increase in knowledge diffusion as measured by patent citations. The increase in knowledge diffusion further caused an increase in the creation of new knowledge. The results provide evidence that jet airplanes led to innovation convergence across locations and contributed to the shift in innovation activity towards the South and the West of the United States.
    Date: 2022–10–21
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:spmain:hal-04067326&r=tre
  8. By: Chad P. Bown (Peterson Institute for International Economics)
    Abstract: The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 provoked a transatlantic trade spat. After the law was passed, the Biden administration addressed some of the concerns raised by the European Union by writing controversial rules to implement the legislation. These regulations are expected to have complex effects that, in some instances, may offset the intended impact of other provisions in the original legislation. This paper examines how the law, its implementing regulations, policy decisions on leasing, as well as potential critical minerals agreements all have the potential to affect the electric vehicle (EV) supply chain. The EV case study showcases the political-economic complications involved in US and EU attempts to cooperate over clean energy transition policy to address the global externality of carbon dioxide emissions. EVs are but one example of the challenge facing partners with integrated supply chains and similar levels of economic development that share concerns about climate change, rising inequality, workers, other social issues, and democracy itself. The EV conflict laid bare the differing US and EU prioritization of these issues relative to economic efficiency, World Trade Organization rules, the approach to nonmarket economies, and national security vulnerabilities that arise from depending on an authoritarian regime such as China for import sourcing of critical inputs.
    Keywords: Electric vehicles, industrial policy, supply chains, climate, US, EU
    JEL: L52 F13
    Date: 2023–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iie:wpaper:wp23-1&r=tre
  9. By: Ahmed Derbel (Université de Sousse - Institut Supérieur du Transport et de la Logistique); Kaies Samet (ISGI Sfax - Institut Supérieur de Gestion Industrielle de Sfax)
    Abstract: The Covid-19 pandemic has become both a global health and socio-economic crisis, with many countries implementing unprecedented mobility restrictions to control the spread of the virus. It therefore seems essential, for example, to assess the impacts of this virus on maritime transport of passengers by ferries, as well as in the worldwide and in Tunisia, by taking the case of the port of La Goulette. For this, we have adopted a methodological approach which is based, on the one hand, on a theoretical study, carried out using works and documents directly related to our subject, and on the other hand, on an empirical study, using the multiple linear regression method, after which we found that there are indicators having impacts on the number of passengers entering the port of La Goulette. These are divided between a negative impact (TND-EUR exchange rate) and positive impacts (the number of cases infected with Covid-19, the number of ships entering in the port of La Goulette and the temperature). However, taking into account the exogenous health variable, it turned out over time that we gradually went from a positive impact on the number of passengers entering the port of La Goulette to a negative impact, in accordance with observation in the tunisian port and the literature review, and finally nowadays to zero impact.
    Abstract: La pandémie du Covid-19 est devenue à la fois une crise sanitaire et socio-économique mondiale, de nombreux pays mettant en œuvre des restrictions de mobilité sans précédent pour contrôler la propagation du virus. Il semble alors primordial, à titre d'exemple, d'évaluer les impacts de ce virus sur le transport maritime des passagers, via les ferries, aussi bien dans le monde qu'en Tunisie, en prenant le cas du port de La Goulette. Pour cela, nous avons adopté une démarche méthodologique qui se base, d'une part, sur une étude théorique, réalisée à l'aide des ouvrages et des documents en relation directe avec notre sujet, et d'autre part, sur une étude empirique, en utilisant la méthode de la régression linéaire multiple, à l'issue de laquelle nous avons trouvé qu'il y a des indicateurs ayant des impacts sur le nombre de passagers entrant au port de La Goulette. Ces derniers sont répartis entre un impact négatif (Taux de change TND-EUR) et des impacts positifs (Nombre des cas infectés par le Covid-19, nombre de navires entrés au port La Goulette et température). Toutefois, en tenant compte de la variable sanitaire exogène, il s'est avéré au fil du temps que nous sommes progressivement passés d'un impact positif sur le nombre de passagers entrés au port de La Goulette à un impact négatif, conformément à l'observation au port tunisien et à la revue de la littérature, et enfin de nos jours à un impact nul.
    Keywords: Ferries traffic, Covid-19 pandemic, the port of La Goulette, multiple linear regression method, the number of passengers entering the port of La Goulette, the number of cases infected with Covid-19, positive impact, negative impact, zero impact., Trafic de ferries, Covid-19, port de La Goulette, méthode de la régression linéaire multiple, nombre de passagers entrés au port de La Goulette, nombre de cas infectés par le Covid-19, impact positif, impact négatif, impact nul.
    Date: 2023–04–27
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04083474&r=tre
  10. By: Hannes Wallimann; Silvio Sticher
    Abstract: In railway infrastructure, construction and maintenance is typically procured using competitive procedures such as auctions. However, these procedures only fulfill their purpose - using (taxpayers') money efficiently - if bidders do not collude. Employing a unique dataset of the Swiss Federal Railways, we present two methods in order to detect potential collusion: First, we apply machine learning to screen tender databases for suspicious patterns. Second, we establish a novel category-managers' tool, which allows for sequential and decentralized screening. To the best of our knowledge, we pioneer illustrating the adaption and application of machine-learning based price screens to a railway-infrastructure market.
    Date: 2023–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2304.11888&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.