IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nan/wpaper/0504.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Competition between highway operators: can we expect toll differentiation?

Author

Listed:
  • Paul Calcott

    (School of Economics and Finance, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)

  • Shuntian Yao

    (Division of Applied Economics, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

Abstract

Where there are alternative roads to the same destination, competition between profit maximizing road operators is possible. Tolls on such roads could perform two welfare enhancing functions; discouraging excessive driving and allocating drivers between roads. The second of these functions will typically require some roads to be more expensive to drive on, and to be less congested, than others. Bertrand equilibrium will not always peform this second function. It may fail to allocate the most impatient drivers to less congested roads, as it does not always deliver toll differentiation. The performance of this second function is dependent on the first. That is, whether or not competing roads will be differentiated by tolls and congestion, will depend in part on the importance of discouraging marginal drivers. The equilibrium will not generally be fully efficient, but will often provide efficiency gains over other decentralized options.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Calcott & Shuntian Yao, 2005. "Competition between highway operators: can we expect toll differentiation?," Economic Growth Centre Working Paper Series 0504, Nanyang Technological University, School of Social Sciences, Economic Growth Centre.
    • Handle: RePEc:nan:wpaper:0504
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/hss2/egc/wp/2005/2005-04.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lee, In Ho & Mason, Robin, 2001. "Market structure in congestible markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(4-6), pages 809-818, May.
    2. Small, Kenneth A. & Yan, Jia, 2001. "The Value of "Value Pricing" of Roads: Second-Best Pricing and Product Differentiation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 310-336, March.
    3. Edelson, Noel M, 1971. "Congestion Tolls Under Monopoly," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 61(5), pages 873-882, December.
    4. Tabuchi, Takatoshi & Thisse, Jacques-Francois, 1995. "Asymmetric equilibria in spatial competition," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 213-227.
    5. Small, Kenneth A., 2001. "The Value of Pricing," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt0rm449sx, University of California Transportation Center.
    6. Engel Eduardo M & Fischer Ronald & Galetovic Alexander, 2004. "Toll Competition Among Congested Roads," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 1-21, March.
    7. Parry, I. W. H., 2002. "Comparing the efficiency of alternative policies for reducing traffic congestion," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(3), pages 333-362, September.
    8. Small, Kenneth A. & Yan, Jia, 2001. "The Value of "Value Pricing" of Roads: Second-Best Pricing and Product Differentiation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 310-336, March.
    9. repec:bla:econom:v:63:y:1996:i:249:p:97-111 is not listed on IDEAS
    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. Clifford Winston, 2013. "On the Performance of the U.S. Transportation System: Caution Ahead," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(3), pages 773-824, September.
    2. Fu, Xinying & van den Berg, Vincent A.C. & Verhoef, Erik T., 2018. "Private road supply in networks with heterogeneous users," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 430-443.
    3. Winston, Clifford & Yan, Jia, 2011. "Can privatization of U.S. highways improve motorists' welfare?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7), pages 993-1005.
    4. Clifford Winston & Jia Yan, 2008. "US Highway Privatization and Heterogeneous Preferences," Working Papers 2008-20, School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University.
    5. van den Berg, Vincent A.C. & Verhoef, Erik T., 2012. "Is the travel time of private roads too short, too long, or just right?," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 46(8), pages 971-983.
    6. André de Palma & Robin Lindsey & Fang Wu, 2008. "Private Operators and Time-of-Day Tolling on a Congested Road Network," Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, University of Bath, vol. 42(3), pages 397-433, September.

    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. Winston, Clifford & Yan, Jia, 2011. "Can privatization of U.S. highways improve motorists' welfare?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7), pages 993-1005.
    2. Ian W.H. Parry, 2009. "Pricing Urban Congestion," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 461-484, September.
    3. Button, Kenneth, 2020. "The Transition From Pigou’S Ideas On Road Pricing To Their Application," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(3), pages 417-438, September.
    4. Safirova, Elena & Gillingham, Kenneth & Parry, Ian & Nelson, Peter & Harrington, Winston & Mason, David, 2004. "8. Welfare And Distributional Effects Of Road Pricing Schemes For Metropolitan Washington Dc," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 179-206, January.
    5. Fu, Xinying & van den Berg, Vincent A.C. & Verhoef, Erik T., 2018. "Private road supply in networks with heterogeneous users," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 430-443.
    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. Fu, Xinying & van den Berg, Vincent A.C. & Verhoef, Erik T., 2018. "Private road networks with uncertain demand," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 57-68.
    8. Coria, Jessica & Bonilla, Jorge & Grundström, Maria & Pleijel, Håkan, 2015. "Air pollution dynamics and the need for temporally differentiated road pricing," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 178-195.
    9. Ubbels, Barry & Verhoef, Erik T., 2008. "Governmental competition in road charging and capacity choice," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 174-190, March.
    10. Daniel A. Brent & Austin Gross, 2018. "Dynamic road pricing and the value of time and reliability," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(2), pages 330-349, March.
    11. Tan, Zhijia & Yang, Hai, 2012. "The impact of user heterogeneity on road franchising," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(5), pages 958-975.
    12. Tikoudis, Ioannis & Verhoef, Erik T. & van Ommeren, Jos N., 2015. "On revenue recycling and the welfare effects of second-best congestion pricing in a monocentric city," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 32-47.
    13. Light, Thomas, 2009. "Optimal highway design and user welfare under value pricing," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 116-124, September.
    14. van den Berg, Vincent & Verhoef, Erik T., 2011. "Winning or losing from dynamic bottleneck congestion pricing?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7), pages 983-992.
    15. Safirova, Elena A. & Houde, Sébastien & Lipman, D. Abram & Harrington, Winston & Bagliano, Andrew D., 2006. "Congestion Pricing: Long-Term Economic and Land-Use Effects," RFF Working Paper Series dp-06-37, Resources for the Future.
    16. Meng, Qiang & Lu, Zhaoyang, 2017. "Quantitative analyses of highway franchising under build-operate-transfer scheme: Critical review and future research directions," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 105-123.
    17. Agarwal, Sumit & Koo, Kang Mo & Sing, Tien Foo, 2015. "Impact of electronic road pricing on real estate prices in Singapore," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 50-59.
    18. Lei Zhang & David Levinson, 2006. "Economics of Road Network Ownership," Working Papers 200908, University of Minnesota: Nexus Research Group.
    19. Qixiu Cheng & Zhiyuan Liu & Feifei Liu & Ruo Jia, 2017. "Urban dynamic congestion pricing: an overview and emerging research needs," International Journal of Urban Sciences, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(0), pages 3-18, August.
    20. Steimetz, Seiji S.C. & Brownstone, David, 2005. "Estimating commuters' "value of time" with noisy data: a multiple imputation approach," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 39(10), pages 865-889, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    congestion; road pricing; networks; market structure;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R41 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - Transportation: Demand, Supply, and Congestion; Travel Time; Safety and Accidents; Transportation Noise
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets

    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:nan:wpaper:0504. 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: Magdalene Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dentusg.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.