US Highway Privatization and Heterogeneous Preferences

Abstract: We assess the welfare effects of highway privatization accounting for government’s behavior in setting the sale price, firms’ strategic behavior in setting tolls in various competitive environments, and motorists’ heterogeneous preferences for speedy and reliable travel. We conclude motorists can benefit from privatization if they are able to negotiate aggressively with a private provider to obtain tolls and service that align with their varying preferences. Surprisingly, motorists are likely to be better off negotiating with a monopolist than with duopoly providers or under public-private competition. Toll regulation may be counterproductive because it would treat motorists as homogeneous. Revised June 2009.Security Breach Costs; Financial Distress; Insurance; Resource Allocation.

Differentiated Road Pricing, Express Lanes and Carpools: Exploiting Heterogeneous Preferences in Policy Design

In the face of rising congestion on the nation's road system, policymakers have explored ways to reduce travel delays. One approach has been to allocate reserved lanes, called high-occupancy-vehicle (HOV) lanes, to vehicles carrying two or more people. A recent innovation is to allow solo drivers to use the HOV lanes if they pay a toll. These so-called high-occupancy-toll (HOT) lanes can be found in Los Angeles, San Diego, Houston, and Minneapolis and are under consideration in several other urban areas. In this paper, we argue that HOV and HOT lanes sacrifice efficiency by failing to price all lanes.Moreover, we show that it is possible to set prices on all lanes that improve on the efficiency of HOV and HOT policies and by catering to motorists' varying preferences, can meet the test of political acceptability.

The Complementary Role of Exports and R&D Investments as Sources of Productivity Growth

This paper examines two potential channels of knowledge acquisition that underlie firm productivity growth in the Taiwanese electronics industry: participation in the export market and investments in R&D and/or worker training. We focus on the argument that a firm's own investments in R&D are necessary for the firm to assimilate knowledge or expertise gained from foreign contacts and thus are an important component of the process of learning-by-exporting. Firm-level panel data from 1986, 1991, and 1996 is used to investigate a firm's decision to invest in these two activities and to assess the effects of these investments on the firm's future total factor productivity. The empirical model consists of four equations. The firm's decisions to export and invest in R&D and/or worker training are modeled with a bivariate probit model that recognizes the interdependence of the decisions. We then estimate how participation in these investment activities alters the firm's future productivity trajectory while controlling for the potential selection bias introduced by endogenous firm exit. The primary empirical findings are that, on average, firms that export but do not invest in R&D and/or worker training have significantly higher future productivity than firms that do not participate in either activity. In addition, firms that export and invest in R&D and/or worker training have significantly higher future productivity than firms that only export. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that export experience is an important source of productivity growth for Taiwanese firms and that firm investments in R&D and worker training facilitate their ability to benefit from their exposure to the export market.

Does Uber Benefit Travelers by Price Discrimination?

We use Uber fare data for passenger trips from Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco airports to hotels in those metropolitan areas to test whether Uber engages in third-degree price discrimination by charging higher fares to travelers who originate from the same airports as other travelers but who stay at more expensive hotels. We find that fares are positively and statistically significantly related to the price of hotel rooms. Importantly, we also find that allowing ride-sharing companies to price discriminate improves travelers’ welfare, on average, by increasing their travel options

Uncovering the Distribution of Motorists' Preferences for Travel Time and Reliability

We apply recent econometric advances to study the distribution of commuters' preferences for speedy and reliable highway travel. Our analysis applies mixed logit to combined revealed and stated preference data on commuter choices of whether to pay a toll for congestion-free express travel. We find that motorists exhibit high values of travel time and reliability and substantial heterogeneity in those values. We suggest that road pricing policies designed to cater to such varying preferences can improve efficiency and reduce the disparity of welfare impacts compared with recent pricing experiments. Forthcoming in Econometrica

DESIGN OF KIP KULIAH SELECTION SYSTEM AND RECIPIENT DETERMINATION USING SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINE (SVM)

KIP Kuliah is tuition assistance from the government for high school graduates or equivalent with good academic potential but has economic limitations. In recent years it has been seen that the Indonesian government has always tried to increase the quota for KIP Kuliah recipients. In this study, the Support Vector Machine (SVM) method was applied to create a system for selecting and determining KIP Kuliah recipients. To obtain the best model to be used in the system, the training and testing data are divided into three data distribution schemes, namely 60/40, 70/30, and 80/20. After the training and testing process was carried out using the SVM method with various parameter variations, then the best accuracy rate of 94.59% is obtained in the 80/20 data sharing scheme for the nonlinear SVM model with the RBF kernel. With this system, it is hoped that the KIP Kuliah selection process at the tertiary level can run effectively, efficiently and the results of the determination are more targeted

A Final Report to the City of Schuyler, Nebraska, on Residents\u27 Perceptions of Housing and the Quality of Life in Schuyler, Nebraska

Schuyler, Nebraska, is on the cutting edge of a global economy in which people are migrating to places that offer jobs and a better quality of life. With the growth of employment opportunities at the Excel Packing Plant, Schuyler’s population is increasing and the demand for affordable housing is rising. To help assess resident perceptions of how the community is responding to these challenges, a team of researchers from the College of Architecture at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln conducted a survey of 85 households in Schuyler in February of 1996. The survey addresses issues of housing and the quality of life in Schuyler from the perspectives of longtime residents (15 or more years in the community) and newly-arrived residents (less than five years in the community). To summarize results of the 95-question survey, there are areas of agreement and disagreement between the long-time and newly-arrived residents of Schuyler. Both groups tend to believe that: (1) Schuyler provides its residents with a good quality of life. (2) Improvements are desired to meet the housing and other needs of its growing population. Long-time and newly-arrived residents tend to express some differences in perceptions, such as: (1) Newly-arrived residents tend to perceive more stress than long-time residents. (2) Long-time residents tend to feel that conditions in the community are getting worse and newly-arrived residents tend to feel that they are getting better. Based on these and other findings from the study, the research team recommends that the following actions be taken to meet the emerging community needs: (1) To continue to gather information about housing options and make it available to the public. (2) To address residential housing priorities identified by long-time and newly-arrived residents. (3) To establish a support group for newly-arrived residents and provide outreach education classes. (4) To continue to improve the local business climate

Chemoresistance in human ovarian cancer: the role of apoptotic regulators

Ovarian cancer is among the most lethal of all malignancies in women. While chemotherapy is the preferred treatment modality, chemoresistance severely limits treatment success. Recent evidence suggests that deregulation of key pro- and anti-apoptotic pathways is a key factor in the onset and maintenance of chemoresistance. Furthermore, the discovery of novel interactions between these pathways suggests that chemoresistance may be multi-factorial. Ultimately, the decision of the cancer cell to live or die in response to a chemotherapeutic agent is a consequence of the overall apoptotic capacity of that cell. In this review, we discuss the biochemical pathways believed to promote cell survival and how they modulate chemosensitivity. We then conclude with some new research directions by which the fundamental mechanisms of chemoresistance can be elucidated