Tariefdifferentiatie naar richting? : prijszetting op onevenwichtige retourmarkten in het vervoer

Markets for transport are often characterized by unequal demand in both directions: everymoming during peak hour the trams are crowded while moving into the direction of the largecities, whereas they may be almost empty into the other direction. A similar pattem oftenexists for freight flows. For example, from the large sea ports in Europe one observes largefreight flows (measured in terms of tons) into the hinterland, whereas the flows in theopposite direction are often smaller. In the present paper we discuss the implications of these imbalances for price setting of transport fims. From the viewpoint of economie theory , two regimes can be distinguished: one where -owing to price differentiation- the flows are equal, and one where unequalflows are the result. Special attention is paid to the case where the transport firm does not apply price differentiation, as is the case in mostrailway firms in Europe. We find that in the case of substantial tost interdependences the introduction of price differentiation does not only lead toan increase in profits, but that also the effect on consumer surplus may well be positive. This result differs from the standard result in theliterature on industrial economics which says that price differentiation has a negative impact on welfare of the average consumer that dominates thepositive effect on profits

The economics of information in transport

Travelers often are incompletely informed about travel alternatives, which has important implications for various domains of travel behavior such as whether or not to make a trip, modal choice, the timing of a trip or route choice. During the last decade large efforts have been made to increase the availability of information to travelers by means of advanced traveler information systems (ATIS). This paper reviews economic aspects of information in transport markets. First, I will discuss information acquisition from an economics perspective by characterizing costs and benefits of information, leading to the formulation of optimal strategies to acquire information. This will be done in the context of search strategies leading to sequential information acquisition. I further discuss the broader consequences of information acquisition on the functioning of transport networks. In congested networks, when travelers change their behavior on the basis of information they obtain, this will have consequences not only for their own travel times, but also those of other travelers. This leads to interesting positive (and possibly negative) spillovers having important policy implications. The next step is the analysis of a traveler's choice whether to adopt advanced traveler information systems, implying the derivation of a demand function for information

Causality Structures in Multiregional Economic Models

This paper contains the first results of a comparative study of multiregional models. It deals with the causality structure of multiregional models. We focus our attention on: (1) The relationship between national production and regional production ("top-down" versus "bottom-up"); (2) The measure in which regional production is determined by variables from the demand side or from the supply side. Their distinctions enables one to formulate a certain classification of multiregional models. The main part of the paper is devoted to a description and evaluation of an example of each model class. The following models are presented: CANDIDE-R (Canada); REMA (Belgium); BALAMO (Japan); MORSE (Sweden); NRIES (USA); and a model built by Fukuchi (Japan)