IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/8278.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Ownership and Use Taxes as Congestion Correcting Instruments

Author

Listed:
  • Ngee-Choon Chia
  • Albert K. C. Tsui
  • John Whalley

Abstract

In countries, such as Singapore, that have implemented vehicle congestion policies, recent years have seen a shift towards motor vehicle taxes based on car use. Ownership taxes reduce the number of cars on the road, leaving the price per trip largely unaffected. Use taxes such as fuel taxes and road use charges decrease the price of trips without necessarily penalising vehicle ownership per se. This paper presents a simple general equilibrium model involving trips from residential areas to a central business district, along with modal choice between cars and public transit. Car trips involve fixed costs but have lower variable costs per trip (including convenience costs) then bus trips. Using a calibrated numerical model, we investigate the relative merits of ownership and use taxes. We compare full internalisation of congestion externalities to optimal tax outcomes for the different tax types. In our framework, use taxes restore Pareto optimality since congestion damage rises with more trips. Ownership taxes only partially internalise congestion externalities. However, in terms of revenue-raising ability, the marginal excess burdens of ownership taxes in the neighbourhood of optimal taxes are typically lower than use taxes. This is because marginal increases in ownership taxes take away part of the surplus accruing to consumers who still choose to travel by car, and thus have less distortion at the margin.

Suggested Citation

  • Ngee-Choon Chia & Albert K. C. Tsui & John Whalley, 2001. "Ownership and Use Taxes as Congestion Correcting Instruments," NBER Working Papers 8278, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8278
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w8278.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wilson, Paul W., 1992. "Residential location and scheduling of work hours," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 325-336, May.
    2. Paul W. Wilson, 1989. "Scheduling Costs and the Value of Travel Time," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 26(3), pages 356-366, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. DE BORGER, Bruno & MAYERES, Inge, "undated". "Taxation of car-ownership, car use and public transport: Insight derived from a discrete choice numerical optimisation model," Working Papers 2004021, University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    2. Ngee-Choon Chia & Sock-Yong Phang, 2001. "Motor vehicle taxes as an environmental management instrument: the case of Singapore," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 4(2), pages 67-93, September.
    3. Santos, Georgina & Behrendt, Hannah & Maconi, Laura & Shirvani, Tara & Teytelboym, Alexander, 2010. "Part I: Externalities and economic policies in road transport," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 2-45.
    4. Matthias Wrede, 2003. "Tax Deductibility of Commuting Expenses and Residential Land Use with more than one Center," CESifo Working Paper Series 972, CESifo.
    5. De Borger, Bruno & Mayeres, Inge, 2007. "Optimal taxation of car ownership, car use and public transport: Insights derived from a discrete choice numerical optimization model," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(5), pages 1177-1204, July.
    6. Button, Kenneth, 2004. "1. The Rationale For Road Pricing: Standard Theory And Latest Advances," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 3-25, January.
    7. Ling Hui Tan, 2003. "Rationing Rules and Outcomes: The Experience of Singapore's Vehicle Quota System," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 50(3), pages 1-5.
    8. De Borger, Bruno & Mulalic, Ismir & Rouwendal, Jan, 2016. "Substitution between cars within the household," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 135-156.
    9. Richard Arnott, 2001. "The Economic Theory of Urban Traffic Congestion: A Microscopic Research Agenda," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 502, Boston College Department of Economics.
    10. Muthukrishnan, Subhashini, 2010. "Vehicle ownership and usage charges," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 17(6), pages 398-408, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Luke Haywood, 2011. "Watch your Workers Win. Changing Job Demands and HRM Responses," management revue - Socio-Economic Studies, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, vol. 22(1), pages 47-64.
    2. van Loon, Ruben & Rietveld, Piet & Brons, Martijn, 2011. "Travel-time reliability impacts on railway passenger demand: a revealed preference analysis," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 917-925.
    3. Wang, James Jixian, 1996. "Timing utility of daily activities and its impact on travel," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 189-206, May.
    4. Noland, Robert B. & Small, Kenneth A. & Koskenoja, Pia Maria & Chu, Xuehao, 1998. "Simulating travel reliability," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 535-564, September.
    5. Takayama, Yuki, 2015. "Bottleneck congestion and distribution of work start times: The economics of staggered work hours revisited," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 81(P3), pages 830-847.
    6. Ho, Chinh Q. & Mulley, Corinne, 2013. "Multiple purposes at single destination: A key to a better understanding of the relationship between tour complexity and mode choice," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 206-219.
    7. Ross, Stephen L. & Yinger, John, 2000. "Timing Equilibria in an Urban Model with Congestion," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 390-413, May.
    8. Piet Rietveld, 2001. "Rounding of Arrival and Departure Times in Travel Surveys: An Interpretation in Terms of Scheduled Activities," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 01-110/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    9. Robin Lindsey, 2004. "Existence, Uniqueness, and Trip Cost Function Properties of User Equilibrium in the Bottleneck Model with Multiple User Classes," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 38(3), pages 293-314, August.
    10. Zhang, Xiaoning & Yang, Hai & Huang, Hai-Jun & Zhang, H. Michael, 2005. "Integrated scheduling of daily work activities and morning-evening commutes with bottleneck congestion," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 41-60, January.
    11. Haiyan Zhu & Hongzhi Guan & Yan Han & Wanying Li, 2022. "Study on Peak Travel Avoidance Behavior of Car Travelers during Holidays," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(17), pages 1-21, August.
    12. Yin-Yen Tseng, 2004. "A meta-analysis of travel time reliability," ERSA conference papers ersa04p415, European Regional Science Association.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8278. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.