Meta-Analytical Studies in Transport Economics : Methodology and Applications

Vast increases in the external costs of transport in the late twentieth century have caused national and international governmental bodies to worry about the sustainability of their transport systems. In this thesis we use meta-analysis as a research method to study various topics in transport economics that are relevant for sustainable transport policymaking. Meta-analysis is a research methodology that is based on the quantitative summarization of a body of previously documented empirical evidence. In several fields of economic, meta-analysis has become a well-accepted research tool. Despite the appeal of the meta-analytical approach, there are methodological difficulties that need to be acknowledged. We study a specific methodological problem which is common in meta-analysis in economics, viz., within-study dependence caused by multiple sampling techniques. By means of Monte Carlo analysis we investigate the effect of such dependence on the performance of various multivariate estimators. In the applied part of the thesis we use and develop meta-analytical techniques to study the empirical variation in indicators of the price sensitivity of demand for aviation transport, the price sensitivity of demand for gasoline, the efficiency of urban public transport and the valuation of the external costs of noise from rail transport. We focus on the estimation of mean values for these indicators and on the identification of the impact of conditioning factors.Nijkamp, P. [Promotor]Rietveld, P. [Promotor

Quality of hub-and-spoke networks; the effects of time-table co-ordination on waiting time and rescheduling time

Low frequencies of aircraft may have substantial negative effects on scheduling costs and waiting costs at hub airports. Appropriate timetabling of carriers will reduce these costs. In this paper we propose a measure for the quality of the co-ordination of timetables by carriers in hub airports. An application is given for four large European airports. We find that large airports such as London Heathrow and Paris Charles de Gaulle have longer waiting times than the smaller airports Frankfurt and Schiphol even though one would expect shorter waiting times given the higher frequencies of service. The reason is that the flight co-ordination is less efficient and this is clearly reflected by the values of the flight co-ordination coefficient developed in this paper. © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved