The impact of price change on consumer choice of automobiles

The objective of this paper is to examine whether a change in the price of a given model of national automobiles affects the choice of alternative car models by consumers. Four models of national automobiles - Saga 1.3cc, Saga 1.5cc, Wira 1.3cc, and Wira 1.5cc - are considered over the period 2000–2002. The results based on the conditional logit model indicate that all of the alternative models are substitutes to each other

On Liability Insurance for Automobiles

Car owners are liable for property damage inflicted on other motorists. In most countries such liability must be insured by law. That law may favor expensive or heavy vehicles, prone to suffer or inflict large losses. This paper explores links between liability rules and vehicle choice. It presumes cooperative insurance, but non-cooperative acquisition of vehicles. Thus, the Nash equilibrium and its degree of efficiency depend on the liability regime

Thought Stopping

Excerpt: A behavioral technique used to help persons troubled by recurring uncontrolled thoughts and worries. Examples include obsessive rumination about cleanliness that persists even after careful washing, excessive fear of riding in automobiles or planes, and extreme fearfulness about being robbed or assaulted

"Automobiles: Strategy-based Lean Production System"

The present situations and future prospects of the Japanese automobile industry are discussed. Selected topics in this paper include the following: analyses of the basic product-industry characteristics of the automobile (e.g., product architecture); the mature of the dynamic competition in the world auto industry; competitive performance (e.g., productivity) of the Japanese auto makers; organizational capabilities of better Japanese firms in production, development and procurement; overall environments in the 1990s; the concept of "balanced lean" system and its adaptation to environmental changes; new flexible production systems that cope with volume fluctuation; architectural strategies of the auto firms; modularization of parts; M&A and alliance; future of the automobile technologies and architectures; future of the capability-building competition.

Railways competition in a park-and-ride model

It is well understood that the way of use of automobiles within urban areas should be reconsidered for environmental improvements, such as reduction of CO2 or energy itself. In this paper, scale effect of city size and cost advantage of railway over automobiles is examined in a simple setting with so-called Park-and-Ride commuter system. Our results are as follows: The fare per mile charged by a monopoly railway firm may not be relevant to the city size; the fare in a symmetric equilibrium under monopolistic competition is decreasing with the city size; the fare in a symmetric zero-profit kinked equilibrium is increasing with the city size; the fare of social optimum is decreasing with the city size.

A Regression on Climate Policy - The European Commission's Proposal to Reduce CO2 Emissions from Transport

As part of its efforts to reach the targets of the Kyoto Protocol, the European Commission is currently considering a new directive to reduce the per-kilometer CO2 emissions of newly registered automobiles. This paper critically assesses this proposal with respect to its economic and technological underpinnings. We argue that the proposal’s reliance on targets based on per-kilometer emissions not only conceals the true costs of compliance and thereby stifles informed public discourse, but is also less cost-effective than alternative measures such as emissions trading.We further examine the proposal’s underlying assumptions, finding that these misrepresent the current state of automotive technology and therefore may overestimate the feasibility of achieving the suggested emissions targets. Alternative targets are consequently proposed that are argued to more accurately reflect the industry's technological evolution to date.Technological progress, private automobiles, efficiency standards

Human emotional response to steering wheel vibration in automobiles

This is the post-print (final draft post-refereeing) version of the final published paper that is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.This study investigates what form of correlation may exist between measures of the valence and the arousal dimensions of the human emotional response to steering wheel vibration and the vibration intensity metrics obtained by means of the unweighted and the frequency weighted root mean square (rms). A laboratory experiment was performed with 30 participants who were presented 17 acceleration time histories in random order and asked to rate their emotional feelings of valence and arousal using a self-assessment manikin (SAM) scale. The results suggest a highly linear correlation between the unweighted, Wh weighted and Ws weighted vibration intensity metrics and the arousal measures of the human emotional response. The results also suggest that while vibration intensity plays a significant role in eliciting emotional feelings, there are other factors which influence the human emotional response to steering wheel vibration such as the presence of high peaks or high frequency band amplitudes

Driving to Opportunity: Understanding the Links among Transportation Access, Residential Outcomes, and Economic Opportunity for Housing Voucher Recipients

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Department of Housing and Urban Development sponsored two major experiments to test whether housing choice vouchers propelled low-income households into greater economic security, the Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing program (MTO) and the Welfare to Work Voucher program (WTW). Using data from these programs, this study examines differences in residential location and employment outcomes between voucher recipients with access to automobiles and those without. Overall, the findings underscore the positive role of automobiles in outcomes for housing voucher participants

Environmental Change and Hedonic Cost Functions for Automobiles

This paper focuses on how changes in the economic and regulatory environment have affected production costs and product characteristics in the automobile industry. We estimate cost functions characteristics. Then we examine how this cost surface has changed over time and how these changes relate to changes in gas prices and in emission standard regulations. We also briefly consider the related questions of how changes in automobile characteristics, and in the rate of patenting, are related to regulations and gas prices.