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on Transport Economics |
| By: | Caroline Orset |
| Abstract: | Despite the various measures taken to reduce air pollution in France, the French continue to use high emitting vehicles. We propose to evaluate the traveller's willingness to pay (WTP) for four means of transport: two high emitting vehicles (taxi diesel and personal diesel car) and two low-emission vehicles (rented electric vehicle and public transport). We get that individuals prefer personal cars. We propose different health and environmental policies to encourage people to adopt low-emission vehicles. Successive messages revealing the effects of air pollution on health and the environment are provided to individuals in a different order. We find that the information and order of information affect the WTP of individuals. This information campaign increases demand for low-emission vehicles, but demand for high emitting vehicles is somewhat affected. Indeed, individuals prefer to ignore information, they behave as in the theory of the tragedy of the commons. We then propose a system of tax subsidies and a standard subsidy system. These two policies drive individuals to switch from high emitting vehicles to low-emission vehicles. The regulator will have to choose between an incentive intervention (with a system of tax subsidies) and a coercive intervention (with a standard subsidy system). |
| Keywords: | Air Pollution; Information campaign; Mean of transport; Standard-subsidy system; Tax-subsidy system; Traveller's willingness to pay |
| JEL: | Q53 H23 I18 |
| Date: | 2017–03–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:apu:wpaper:2017/02&r=tre |
| By: | Thando Vilakazi; Anthea Paelo |
| Abstract: | Efficient transport links are critical to enhancing the integration of markets in Southern Africa. This paper assesses the structure of markets, competition, and prices and costs of road transportation between urban hubs in Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Key findings are that certain routes, such as that between Lusaka and Johannesburg, have become more competitive over time and relative to benchmarks due to the availability of loads in each direction, improved efficiencies, and greater competitive rivalry between trucking firms from different countries. However, border delays and control of access to loads by large brokers continue to negatively affect competition and efficiency. |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp2017-46&r=tre |
| By: | Camilo Umana Dajud |
| Abstract: | By reducing transport costs infrastructure can impact wages, the distribution of population and welfare among other important variables. In this paper I exploit a natural experiment provided by the opening of the Panama Canal and intercoastal cargo routes connecting the west and east coasts of Canada through the canal to examine the causal impact of a reduction of domestic trade costs. The particular characteristics of this setting allow me to estimate the causal impact without recurring to instrumental variable strategies. The estimates are also not confounded with the Keynesian effect of building new infrastructure since no infrastructure was actually setup in Canada. Using least cost path routes along the Canadian transport grid I determine treated municipalities. The paper documents the positive impact of the reduction of transport costs on population and the value of real property but a negative impact on nominal wages. I then use a simplified version of an economic geography model with perfect mobility of workers to compute domestic trade shares between Canadian municipalities and productivities at the municipal level. I use these empirical results and the model, to quantify general equilibrium changes in wages, population and trade shares triggered by the reduction in domestic transport costs. Finally, I show that the opening of intercoastal shipping routes had a large positive welfare effect across Canadian municipalities. |
| Keywords: | Trade Costs;Infrastructure;Panama Canal;Canada;Welfare effects |
| JEL: | O18 R12 R42 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cii:cepidt:2017-02&r=tre |
| By: | Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto |
| Abstract: | Will politics lead to over-building or under-building of transportation projects? In this paper, we develop a model of infrastructure policy in which politicians overdo things that have hidden costs and underperform tasks whose costs voters readily perceive. Consequently, national funding of transportation leads to overspending, since voters more readily perceive the upside of new projects than the future taxes that will be paid for distant highways. Yet when local voters are well-informed, the highly salient nuisances of local construction, including land taking and noise, lead to under-building. This framework explains the decline of urban mega-projects in the US (Altshuler and Luberoff 2003) as the result of increasingly educated and organized urban voters. Our framework also predicts more per capita transportation spending in low-density and less educated areas, which seems to be empirically correct. |
| Keywords: | Infrastructure, Political economy, Transportation investment, Nuisance mitigation, Elections, Imperfect information |
| JEL: | D72 D82 H54 H76 R42 R53 |
| Date: | 2017–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upf:upfgen:1556&r=tre |
| By: | Dozie Okoye (Department of Economics, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS); Roland Pongou (Department of Economics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON); Tite Yokossi (Department of Economics, MIT, Cambridge, MA) |
| Abstract: | Exploring heterogeneity in the impact of a technology is a first step towards understanding conditions under which this technology is conducive to economic development. This article shows that colonial railroads in Nigeria have large long-lasting impacts on individual and local development in the North, but virtually no impact in the South neither in the short run nor in the long run. This heterogeneous impact of the railway can be accounted for by the distance to ports of export. We highlight the fact that the railway had no impact in areas that had access to ports of export, thanks to their proximity to the coast and to their use of waterways, and that those areas barely adopted the railway as it did not reduce their shipping costs. Our analyses rule out the possibility that the heterogeneous impacts are driven by cohort effects, presence of major roads, early cities, or missionary activity, or by crude oil production. |
| Keywords: | Impact Heterogeneity, Colonial Investments, Railway, Africa, Long-run Effects, Development, Nigeria |
| JEL: | O15 O18 N30 N37 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ott:wpaper:1703e&r=tre |
| By: | Badia, Hugo; Argote-Cabanero , Juan; Daganzo, Carlos F. |
| Abstract: | This paper shows that improving the structure of a bus transit network to facilitate transfers can boost and shape its demand. The idea is illustrated with data from the Nova Xarxa in Barcelona. Deployed in phases, the Nova Xarxa is shown to be attracting more demand than the network it replaces. The paper further shows that this growth is underpinned by transfers -- at the end of 2015, the percentage of trips that involved a transfer was approximately 26%, and it reached a maximum of 57% for line V7. The paper shows these numbers should increase considerably (to 44% and 66%, respectively) once the Nova Xarxa is completed in 2018. This should be compared with the percent of transfers in other existing bus systems, which ranges from 1.3% to 16%. |
| Keywords: | Engineering, Public transport, Bus system, Bus network design, Transfer-based network, Network effect |
| Date: | 2016–12–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsrrp:qt3996t4c6&r=tre |
| By: | Uwe Cantner (School of Economics and Business Administration, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena); Josefine Diekhof (DFG-GRK-1411 "The Economics of Innovative Change", PhD program of the Max Planck Institute of Economics & Friedrich-Schiller University Jena) |
| Abstract: | In the context of technological change, the influence of innovative entrants on incumbents is considered a major driving force. Using global patent data, we analyze this influence for the case of the transition from combustion engine vehicles towards alternative technology vehicles (ATVs). Entrants play a key role in developing ATV-related patents, whereas automotive incumbents are considered as being less motivated in pursuing this new technology. Our results indicate that entrants' ATV-related knowledge accumulation stimulates incumbents' ATV-related research. Domestic entrants had a positive effect on the large incumbent majority that exhibited low ATV patent stocks whereas incumbents with high ATV patent stocks reacted with decreasing patenting; which is assumed to be a sign of R&D outsourcing or strategic acquisitions. Entrants in foreign countries yielded increasing incumbent responses along increasing incumbents' ATV patent stocks; which is in line with previously found competitive reactions to entry. Further, younger entrants, pre-entry patent- inexperienced entrants, and entrant leaders with greater technological relevance were more influential than their counterparts (old, experienced, and less technological relevant). This suggests that not only diversifying but also new establishments have an effect on incumbents. As technological leading and inexperienced entrants showed a stronger effect on incumbents but were outnumbered by their counterparts, it underpins that entrants with important characteristics and not the pure number of entrants drive these effects on incumbents. |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics, Technological Change, Industry Dynamics, Entrepreneurship, Transport Industry, Electric Vehicle |
| JEL: | Q55 O3 Q52 R49 L91 L26 O31 |
| Date: | 2017–03–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2017-004&r=tre |
| By: | Boes, Stefan (University of Lucerne); Stillman, Steven (Free University of Bozen/Bolzano) |
| Abstract: | This paper exploits the reduction in the legal drinking age in New Zealand from 20 to 18 to study the dynamics of youth risk taking. Using administrative data on the universe of road accidents over a fifteen year period spanning the law change, we undertake three complimentary analyses to examine the dynamics of alcohol-related and total vehicular accidents among youth. First, using an event history approach, we find no evidence that changing the drinking age from 20 to 18 led to more vehicular accidents or alcohol-related accidents among teens. This is true both in the short-run following the law change and when examining cumulative accidents for the affected cohorts. Next, using an age-based regression discontinuity design (RDD), we find that accidents do increase after one's 18th birthday, but this appears to be a short-run phenomenon. Finally, estimating flexible parametric regression models suggests that reducing the drinking age led to a decline in risky driving by youth who were already 15 at the time of the change but had no longer-run impacts. Overall, our results support the argument that the legal drinking age can be lowered without increasing detrimental outcomes for youth and call into question previous studies that have made policy recommendations by extrapolating from results identified using age-based RDDs. |
| Keywords: | drinking age, vehicular accidents, regression discontinuity design, dynamics, New Zealand |
| JEL: | I18 K42 C25 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10543&r=tre |
| By: | Knapp, S.; Heij, C. |
| Abstract: | This study provides an empirical evaluation of maritime risk exposure expressed as the monetary value at risk (MVR), which incorporates life of crew and passengers, vessel value of hull and machinery, carried cargo value, third party liabilities, and potential external damages like pollution. MVR is based on individual safety quality data of about 130,000 vessels, on insurable values related to various potential damages, and on proxies for fractions of values lost at incidents. MVR provides a tool to enhance strategic planning of maritime administrations and insurance providers, which is illustrated by a high level comparison of annual risk exposure with insurance premiums for 2010 to 2014. The analysis reveals a global annual insurable value of 30.6 trillion USD with associated annual MVR of 38.8 billion USD for very serious and serious incidents. Although oil tankers show the highest risk exposure (1.75 million USD per tanker per year), safety qualities are found to be best for this ship type (1.4% annual incident risk) and worst for container vessels (2.8%). Annual growth rates in total risk exposure are mostly positive with highest value for dry bulk carriers (27.8%), whereas risk exposure tends to decline for pollution of oil tankers (-2.0%) and passenger vessels (-11.3%), and for loss of life of oil tankers (-1.9%) and dry bulk carriers (-1.4%) but not of passenger vessels (6.9%). A comparison across administrative dimensions reveals that most risk exposure lies with old open registries and with beneficial owners and DoC companies located in high income countries. Comparison with global insurance premiums suggests reasonably adequate coverage of maritime risks (excluding cargo). Our analysis indicates under-insurance of risk by around 5%, corresponding to about 1 billion USD per year, with some uncertainties remaining for the actual loss fractions of the various involved damages. |
| Keywords: | shipping incident, monetary value at risk, risk exposure, insurance, pollution, loss of life |
| Date: | 2016–01–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ems:eureir:98036&r=tre |