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on Transport Economics |
| By: | Mark R. Jacobsen |
| Abstract: | Fuel economy standards change the composition of the vehicle fleet, potentially influencing accident safety. I introduce a model of the fleet that captures risks across interactions between vehicle types while simultaneously recovering estimates of unobserved driving safety behavior. The model importantly includes the ability to consider the selection of driver types across vehicles. I apply the model to the present structure of U.S. fuel economy standards and find an adverse effect on safety: Each MPG increment to the standard results in an additional 149 fatalities per year in expectation. I next show how two alternative regulatory provisions, including one slated to enter effect next year, can fully offset the negative safety consequences; minor changes in the regulation produce a robust, near-zero change in accident fatalities while conserving the same quantity of gasoline. |
| JEL: | L9 Q4 Q5 |
| Date: | 2012–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:18012&r=tre |
| By: | Jesus Gonzalez-Feliu (LET - Laboratoire d'économie des transports - CNRS : UMR5593 - Université Lumière - Lyon II - Ecole Nationale des Travaux Publics de l'Etat) |
| Abstract: | Collaborative transportation and logistics pooling are relatively new concepts in research, but are very popular in practice. In the last years, collaborative transportation seems a good city logistics alternative to classical urban consolidation centres, but it is still in a development stage. This paper proposes a framework for urban logistics pooling ex-ante evaluation. This framework is developed with two purposes. The first is to generate comparable contrasted or progressive scenarios representing realistic situations; the second to simulate and assess them to make a "before-after" comparative analysis. In this framework, a demand generation model is combined with a route optimization algorithm to simulate the resulting routes of the proposed individual or collaborative distribution schemes assumed by each scenario. Then, several indicators can be obtained, mainly travelled distances, working times, road occupancy rates and operational monetary costs. To illustrate that framework, several scenarios for the urban area of Lyon (France) are simulated and discussed to illustrate the proposed framework possible applications. |
| Keywords: | urban logistics; resource sharing; freight transport pooling; policy-oriented modelling; simulation-based comparative analysis |
| Date: | 2011–11–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00688967&r=tre |
| By: | Andreas Lange (University of Hamburg); Andreas Ziegler (University of Kassel) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the voluntary provision of public goods that is partially driven by a desire to offset for individual polluting activities. We first extend existing theory and show that offsets allow a reduction in effective environmental pollution levels while not necessarily extending the consumption of a polluting good. We further show a nonmonotonic income-pollution relationship and derive comparative static results for the impact of an increasing environmental preference on purchases of offsets and mitigation activities. Several theoretical results are then econometrically tested using a novel data set on activities to reduce CO2 emissions for the case of vehicle purchases in the U.S. and Germany. We show that an increased environmental preference triggers the use of CO2 offsetting and mitigation channels in both countries. However, we find strong country differences for the purchase of CO2 offsets. While such activities are already triggered by a high general awareness of the climate change problem in the U.S., driver’s license holders in Germany need to additionally perceive road traffic as being responsible for CO2 emissions to a large extent. |
| Keywords: | public good, voluntary provision, climate change, CO2 offsetting, vehicle purchase, discrete choice models |
| JEL: | C25 C35 H41 Q54 |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mar:magkse:201218&r=tre |
| By: | Dillon, Andrew; Sharma, Manohar; Zhang, Xiaobo |
| Abstract: | During the period of Nepal's ninth Five-Year Plan (1997–2002), agricultural growth in the predominantly rural society was disappointing. The recent peace process, however, gives the country new opportunities to develop its economy with less interference due to internal conflict. This research monograph investigates how Nepal might seize these opportunities by increasing agricultural growth and poverty reduction through improvements in roads, irrigation, and rural extension. The authors evaluate the impact of public investments in these areas by using two types of data and methodology: a hedonic approach that relates access to public infrastructure and services to land value and a panel of household-level data on consumption, poverty, and income. The hedonic methodology suggests a positive relationship between investments in irrigation and extension and household welfare, although the panel data approach suggests otherwise. This result reinforces the importance of methodology in evaluating rural investments. Rural roads yielded more clear-cut findings, however: both approaches agree that investment there has a positive relationship with household welfare, as measured in land values, consumption growth, poverty reduction, or agricultural income growth. The authors recommend increased public investments in rural roads, irrigation, and extension, as well as further research into precisely how infrastructure and services affect rural households' welfare and how their effectiveness can be improved. This monograph will be useful to policymakers, researchers, and others concerned with Nepal's future development. |
| Keywords: | Agricultural growth, Poverty reduction, Public investments, hedonic approach, household data, policymakers, Rural development, infrastructure, Rural conditions, Economic aspects, |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:resrep:andrewdillon&r=tre |
| By: | DÖRRY Sabine; DECOVILLE Antoine |
| Abstract: | Despite continuing processes of economic and political integration in the European Union (EU), borders have been proven to be persistent. Politically backed and financially supported by the EU, cross-border regions are subject to economic and cultural coalescence. However, the established top-down crossborder policy network structures do not necessarily lead to the results originally aimed at. Policy networks are supposed to make the proclaimed economic, socio-cultural, and spatial EU integration process work on a local level. By empirically analysing cross-border policy networks in one specific though highly central policy domain – the public transportation – we reveal contradictions/inconsistencies and impediments caused by the „border effect? and the complex nature of a specific cross-border policy network in the field of public transportation. With the technique of the social network analysis we trace and discuss such a kind of network. Our empirical findings lead us to critically examine what Hooghe and Marks (2003) describe as „type-II-governance? in crossborder regions. |
| Keywords: | Cross-border metropolitan regions; public transportation; Luxembourg and the Greater Region; social network analysis; multi-level governance |
| JEL: | F15 F16 R50 R58 |
| Date: | 2012–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:irs:cepswp:2012-22&r=tre |
| By: | Nicola Lacetera; Justin R. Sydnor |
| Abstract: | Are location-specific factors—such as the education and attitude of the local workforce, supplier networks, institutional infrastructure, and local “culture”—important for understanding persistent heterogeneities among firms? We address this question in the context of the automobile industry. Using a unique data set of over 565,000 used-car transactions at wholesale auctions, we test whether the long-run value and quality of otherwise identical cars depends on the country of assembly. We exploit the natural experiment provided by the establishment of assembly plants in the U.S. by Japanese auto manufacturers, and the fact that some of the most popular Japanese car models are assembled both in Japan and the U.S. We find evidence that the Japan-assembled cars on average sell for more than those built in the U.S., but the estimated difference is only $62. The average differences are driven almost entirely by older-model Toyotas, for which we find a more meaningful difference between the Japanese and U.S. built cars. For Hondas and more recent models of Toyotas, the Japan-built cars are no more valuable than those built in the U.S. These results suggest that Japanese automakers have been successful, though perhaps with some lag, at transferring their high-quality practices to their U.S. transplants. Our findings also suggest that there is not an inherent limitation to the U.S. manufacturing environment that prevents the production of high-quality cars in America. |
| JEL: | D24 F23 L62 M11 |
| Date: | 2012–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:18005&r=tre |