1,721,387 research outputs found
Synthesis of case study results and future prospects
No full textThis chapter summarises the results of the case studies and assesses their main insights. It also draws on recent experience with congestion pricing in London and elsewhere to consider the prospects of successful implementation of efficient pricing and revenue-use schemes.edition: 1status: Publishe
Investment and the use of tax and toll revenues in the transport sector: the research agenda
No full textThis chapter introduces the research agenda. The problems related to the use of revenues from tolling and charging in the transport sector are organised into nine research questions. These range from the optimal level of user charges to the optimal allocation of the revenues and the appropriate choice of institutions to accomplish this. The theoretical contributions and the case studies of the book are briefly outlined.edition: 1status: Publishe
Comparing alternative pricing and revenue use strategies with the Molino Model
No full textCost–benefit analysis plays a central role in planning and investment decisions related to transportation. Yet, this process is often rather obscure and difficult to control and check by an outsider. We propose here a new engineering-economic-based tool, MOLINO, to perform cost benefit analysis of transport projects and regulations in a network and multi-period context. MOLINO performs cost–benefit analysis for different transport modes and types of freight and/or passenger traffic, peak and off-peak time periods, diverse market structures (private or public monopoly or duopoly, regulated or unregulated) and various financing schemes. Congestion levels are computed endogenously. MOLINO computes costs and benefits over multiple periods and the length of the time horizon is flexible. Outputs include equilibrium values of user and social benefits, financial flows and measures of effectiveness such as congestion delays.edition: 1status: Publishe
The environmental impact of a shift to rail from short-haul flights
No full textIn the context of mitigating climate change, a shift from air to rail is proposed for short-haul journeys. The impact of this policy on the GHG emissions of aviation is small and will be even marginal if only journeys < 500 km are involved. These journeys account for 2.2% of the mileage of air travel, and the impact on emissions will be even smaller than this figure, mainly because not all air travellers (likely) will shift, and part of the emission reduction will be undone by increasing emissions of rail transport. When the upper limit of involved distances increases, the impact increases significantly as well; but even at a limit of 1200 km, which is about the upper limit of the market range of the train, the impact will likely be smaller than the opposite impact of the annual growth of air travel. Policy intentions seem to be prompted by just to do something that doesn’t hurt people so much rather than by a systematic analysis of possible measures and their effectiveness.Transport and Plannin
Economic analysis of traffic safety
Full text linkIn this dissertation I focus on the behaviour of people – and more particularly on the choice of speed/level of care and the number of trips they make - as 85 percent of all accidents are mainly due to road users’ error. This behaviour can be influenced by the use of different instruments such as traffic regulation, liability rules, infrastructural and technical measures, education and sensitisation. The focus of this work lies on regulation and its enforcement, liability rules and economic instruments, which influence the behaviour of people and hence traffic safety.
The first paper of this dissertation deals withstatus: Publishe
Essays on political economy of energy and environment.
No full textIn this PhD dissertation we gain insight into environmental policies and their enforcement, and the political process that leads to the in practice observed suboptimal policies. The area of interest is the European Union (EU) and the United States of America (USA). We apply a specific class of models that is ideally suited to study the impact of incentives and selection on environmental and energy policymaking: political agency models. At the heart of these models is the principal-agent relationship between the government/politicians (the agent) and the citizens/voters (the principals). In this relationship, an incentive problem arises as the citizens delegate authority to the policymakers who benefit from an informational advantage. We build on the concept of a government and politicians that are susceptible to influence. In the first two papers, we apply the common agency model of Dixit et al. (1997) to two different research questions. Common agency is a multilateral relationship in which several principals simultaneously try to influence the actions of an agent. Such situations occur frequently, particularly in the political processes that generate economic policies. In the first paper, we apply the common agency model to enforcement of environmental legislation in European countries. In practice we observe that both the inspection rate and the penalty level differ strongly among European countries for the same legislation. We study whether the differences in enforcement policies can be justified from an efficiency perspective, and if not, whether they favor the interests of certain lobby groups. We find that, despite the regulatory costs, green interest groups generally favor more stringent enforcement strategies with high fines and high inspection frequencies, while brown interest groups prefer laxer enforcement strategies. In the second paper, we apply the common agency model to the adoption of a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) policy by states in the US, to better understand the impact of special industrial interests on policy decision-making. In the last two decades, many U.S. states introduced support policies to promote electricity generation from renewable energy sources. Renewable portfolio standards (RPS) are considered to be the key policy tool to date. An important question is why some state legislators were front-running the trend of RPS implementation while others adopted policies just recently, and again others have not adopted them so far. We theoretically prove that lobby efforts of conventional energy interests (CEI) have a negative, and those of renewable energy interests (REI) a positive, impact on the adoption of RPS. To confirm the hypotheses that come out of the theory, we compile data on financial contributions of both types of energy interests to US state-level policymakers between 1998 and 2010. We find that CEI have donated more to state-level legislators affiliated with the Republican Party than to Democrats while contributions from REI went largely to Democrats. Also, we reveal statistically significant links between the likelihood of RPS adoption and private interest contributions. Financial contributions from CEI have a negative effect on the likelihood of RPS adoption while REI contributions have a positive effect. And finally, the estimates show a similar, albeit less significant, pattern on RPS stringency.For the last two papers, we focus on elections as the core mechanism to solve monitoring and selection problems inherent to a principal-agent relationship in politics. In the third paper, we show how politicians, in a probabilistic electoral setting, set support for solar PV at a level that maximizes election chances instead of opting for the socially desirable level. In several EU countries we observe a strong discrimination in the renewable energy support in favor of particular technologies, mainly solar PV. We examine what drives the agencies or politicians to follow this strategy in promoting particular types of renewable energy. The aim of our model is to put forward an important explanation for discrimination in support for renewables from a political point of view. In the fourth paper, we study how politicians sometimes take protectionist measures in international trade of renewable energy, as a way to disguise transfers towards the domestic renewable industry. Harmonizing renewable energy support across the single European market rather than in protected national markets could reduce costs by as much as 10%. Up to now, there have been no serious attempts to move the different European national support systems more into a common direction. In this paper, we put forward a political explanation for these economic inefficiencies. Our hypothesis is that the national governments were influenced by a strong national industrial lobby that favored a domestic renewable production sector.status: Publishe
Essays on transport policy and technology.
No full textThis dissertation analyzes policy instruments to address road congestion externalities in a second-best world. First, it studies congestion pricing when only a part of the transport network can be priced and the government uses labor taxes for redistribution purposes although they distort agents' behavior. This analysis highlights the importance of the choice of the tax-revenue-recycling scheme when equity concerns are considered. Second, this dissertation analyzes public transport pricing when automobile congestion cannot be priced and labor taxes are used either for revenue raising or redistribution purposes. This analysis shows how public finance constraints can affect the design of public transport services. Finally, this dissertation proposes a modeling approach to study the case where congestion is generated in combination with climate change externalities. This analysis illustrates the different margins of consumer behavior through which energy and transport instruments act on both externalities, and the importance of accounting for consumer behavior whenever energy issues are analyzed in transport.status: Publishe
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