The effect of private road supply on the volume/capacity ratio when firms compete Stackelberg in Road Capacity

We study road supply by competing firms between a single origin and destination. In previous studies, firms simultaneously set their tolls and capacities while taking the actions of the others as given in a Nash fashion. Then, under some widely used technical assumptions, firms set the same volume/capacity ratio as a public operator would and thus have the same amount of congestion and travel time. We find that this result does not hold if capacity and toll setting are separate stages—as then firms want to limit the competition in the toll stage by setting lower capacities—or when firms set capacities one after the other in a Stackelberg fashion—as then firms want to limit their competitors’ capacities by setting higher capacities. In our Stackelberg competition, the firms that act last have few if any capacity decisions to influence. Hence, they are more concerned with the toll competition substage, and set a higher volume/capacity ratio than the public operator. The firms that act first care more about their competitors’ capacities they can influence: they set a lower ratio and have the largest capacities. The average volume/capacity ratio is below the public ratio, and hence the average private travel time is too short. Still, in our numerical model, for three or more firms, welfare is higher under Stackelberg competition than under Nash competition, because of the larger Stackelberg capacity expansion and lower tolls.

Auctions for private congestible infrastructures

This paper investigates regulation by auctions of private supply of congestible infrastructures in two networks settings: 1) two serial facilities, where the consumer has to use both in order to consume; and 2) two parallel facilities that are imperfect substitutes. There are four market structures: a monopoly and 3 duopolies that differ in how firms interact. The effects of an auction depend on what the bidders compete. With a bid auction, the bidders compete on how much money they transfer to the government. This auction leads to the same outcome as the unregulated game (for a given market structure), since this gives the maximum profit to transfer. An auction on the capacity of a facility leads to an even lower welfare than no regulation, because firms set very high capacities and usage fees. Conversely, an auction on generalised price or number of users leads to the first-best outcome. Moreover, these two auctions are robust: they attain the first-best regardless of whether the facilities are auctioned off to a single firm or to two firms, and for all market and network structures. On the contrary, the performances (relative to the first-best) of the bid and capacity auctions strongly depend on these considerations

The effect of private road supply on the volume/capacity ratio when firms compete Stackelberg in Road Capacity

We study road supply by competing firms between a single origin and destination. In previous studies, firms simultaneously set their tolls and capacities while taking the actions of the others as given in a Nash fashion. Then, under some widely used technical assumptions, firms set the same volume/capacity ratio as a public operator would and thus have the same amount of congestion and travel time. We find that this result does not hold if capacity and toll setting are separate stages—as then firms want to limit the competition in the toll stage by setting lower capacities—or when firms set capacities one after the other in a Stackelberg fashion—as then firms want to limit their competitors' capacities by setting higher capacities. In our Stackelberg competition, the firms that act last have few if any capacity decisions to influence. Hence, they are more concerned with the toll competition substage, and set a higher volume/capacity ratio than the public operator. The firms that act first care more about their competitors' capacities they can influence: they set a lower ratio and have the largest capacities. The average volume/capacity ratio is below the public ratio, and hence the average private travel time is too short. Still, in our numerical model, for three or more firms, welfare is higher under Stackelberg competition than under Nash competition, because of the larger Stackelberg capacity expansion and lower tolls

Choice of season cards in public transport: a study of a Stated Preference experiment

This paper studies a Stated Preference (SP) experiment on the choice of type of (Rail) season card, conducted among current Dutch Railways season cardholders. They were asked to choose from the following three alternatives: (1) an unrestricted season card, (2) a cheaper season card with peak travel and travel frequency restrictions, and (3) not buying a season card. Multinomial logit (MNL), nested logit and mixed logit models are used to analyse their choices. It is found that MNL underestimates the price sensitivities (as measured by the price elasticities) of the respondents and overestimates their Willingnessto- Pay (WTP) for reductions in the restrictions. The mixed logit estimation shows that there are (unobserved) differences in the marginal utilities of the price of the card (response heterogeneity), and the utility of owning a season card (preference heterogeneity). In the Netherlands a large share of commuters and business travellers receive travel cost compensation from their employer. However, empirical studies often do not control for the effect of travel cost compensation. We find, as expected, that travel cost compensation has a large impact on the price sensitivities and choices of the respondents

Novel microstructures and technologies applied in chemical analysis techniques

Novel glass and silicon microstructures and their application in chemical analysis are presented. The micro technologies comprise (deep) dry etching, thin layer growth and anodic bonding. With this combination it is possible to create high resolution electrically isolating silicon dioxide structures with aspect ratio's similar to those possible in silicon. Main applications are chemical separation methods such as high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) or electrophoresis (HPCE). Beside these channel structures, a capillary connector with very low dead and mixing volume has been designed and fabricated for use in (correlation) electrophoresis, and tested by means of precision of consecutive single injection

Private road networks with uncertain demand

We study the efficiency of private supply of roads under demand uncertainty and evaluate various regulatory policies. Due to demand uncertainty, capacity is decided before demand is known but tolls can be adjusted after demand is known. Policy implications can differ from those under deterministic demand. For instance, for serial links, the toll in the second-best zero-profit case is no longer equal to the marginal external congestion cost. In the first-best scenario, the capacity under uncertain demand is higher than that under deterministic demand of the same expected value, though self-financing still holds in expected terms. Regulation by perfect competitive auction cannot replicate the second-best zero-profit result and thus leads to a lower welfare, whereas without uncertainty, various forms of competitive auctions can attain this second-best optimum. For more complex networks, when private firms add capacity in turn, contrary to the case without demand uncertainty, some forms of auction perform better than others with demand uncertainty

A Service of zbw Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in Abstract This paper investigates regulation by auctions of private supply of congestible infrastructures in two networks settings: 1) two serial facilities, where the consumer has to use both in order to consume; and 2) two parallel facilities that are imperfect substitutes. There are four market structures: a monopoly and 3 duopolies that differ in how firms interact. The effects of an auction depend on what the bidders compete. With a transfer auction, the bidders compete on how much money they transfer to the government. This auction leads to the same outcome as the game without an auction (for a given market structure), since this gives the maximum profit to transfer. An auction on the capacity of a facility leads to an even lower welfare than no auction, because firms set very high capacities and usage fees. Conversely, an auction on the generalised price or number of users leads to the first-best outcome. Moreover, these two auctions are robust: they attain the first-best regardless of whether the facilities are auctioned off to a single firm or to two, and for all market and network structures. On the contrary, the performances (relative to the firstbest) of the transfer and capacity auctions strongly depend on these considerations

Stochastic User Equilibrium Traffic Assignment with Price-sensitive Demand: Do Methods matter (much)?

We compare three stochastic user equilibrium traffic assignment models multinomial probit, nested logit, and generalized nested logit), using a congestible transport network. We test the models in two situations: one in which they have theoretically equivalent coefficients, and one in which they are calibrated to have similar traffic flows. In each case, we examine the differences in traffic flows between the SUE models, and use them to evaluate policy decisions, such as profit-maximizing tolling or second-best socially optimal tolling. We then investigate how the optimal tolls, and their performance, depend on the model choice, and hence, how important the differences between models are. We show that the differences between models are small, as a result of the congestibility of the network, and that a better calibration does not always lead to better traffic flow predictions. As the outcomes are so similar, it may be better to use computationally more efficient logit models instead of probit models, in at least some applications, even if the latter is preferable from a conceptual viewpoint

On the Existence and Uniqueness of Equilibrium in the Bottleneck Model with Atomic Users

This paper investigates the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium in the Vickrey bottleneck model when each user controls a positive fraction of total traffic. Users simultaneously choose departure schedules for their vehicle fleets. Each user internalizes the congestion cost that each of its vehicles imposes on other vehicles in its fleet. We establish three results. First, a pure strategy Nash equilibrium (PSNE) may not exist. Second, if a PSNE does exist, identical users may incur appreciably different equilibrium costs. Finally, a multiplicity of PSNE can exist in which no queuing occurs but departures begin earlier or later than in the system optimum. The order in which users depart can be suboptimal as well. Nevertheless, by internalizing self-imposed congestion costs individual users can realize much, and possibly all, of the potential cost savings from either centralized traffic control or time-varying congestion tolls