Economics of a bottleneck
1990; Elsevier BV; Volume: 27; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1016/0094-1190(90)90028-l
ISSN1095-9068
AutoresRichard Arnott, André de Palma, Robin Lindsey,
Tópico(s)Economic and Environmental Valuation
ResumoDrawing on Vickrey (Amer. Econ. Rev. 59, 251–261 (1969)) and subsequent literature, this paper provides a thorough economic analysis of the simplest bottleneck model of road congestion with peak-load demand: In the morning rush hour, a fixed number of identical individuals, one per car, must travel from home to work, between which is a bottleneck of given capacity. The costs of travel include queuing time and schedule delay (time early or late for work). The frequency distribution of departure times adjusts so that in equilibrium all individuals have the same travel costs. The paper extends the previous literature by examining a coarse toll and solving for optimal capacities. The application of congestion tolls can generate efficiency gains by altering the frequency distribution of departure times. Previous estimates of the efficiency gains from congestion tolling are likely to be substantially downward-biased because they have ignored this effect.
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