Incentive Regulatory policies: The Case of Public Transit Systems in France

We assess the empirical relevance of the new theory of regulation, using a principal-agent framework to study the regulatory schemes used in the French urban transport industry. Taking the current regulatory schemes as given, the model of supply and demand provides estimates for the firms’ inefficiency, the effort of managers, and the cost of public funds. It allows us to derive the first-best and second-best regulatory policies for each network and compare them with the actual situation in terms of welfare loss or gain. Fixed-price policies lie between fully informed and uninformed second-best schemes. Cost-plus contracts are dominated by any type of second-best contract. From these results, we may conjecture that fixed-price contracts call for better-informed regulators.Publicad

Stochastic Frontiers and Asymmetric Information Models

This article suggests that the global inefficiency which generally affects a production process is endogenous and depends on the incentives generated by the process environment. We propose to treat the usual correlation between the inefficiency and the regressors of the production frontier through the economic constraints that interfere on the activity of the producer

Contract choice, incentives and political capture in public transport services

We consider a framework of contractual interactions between urban transport authorities and transport operators. We estimate simultaneously the choice of contract by the authorities and the effect of regulation on the cost reducing activity of the operators. We test whether regulatory schemes currently implemented in the industry are the observable items of a more general menu of second best contracts. We suggest that the generation process of the data we have in hand is better explained by the political aspects of regulation. Moreover, the cost reducing effort of the operators is greater under fixed-price regimes, compared to the cost-plus case

Contract choice, incentives and political capture in public transport services

We consider a framework of contractual interactions between urban transport authorities and transport operators. We estimate simultaneously the choice of contract by the authorities and the effect of regulation on the cost reducing activity of the operators. We test whether regulatory schemes currently implemented in the industry are the observable items of a more general menu of second best contracts. We suggest that the generation process of the data we have in hand is better explained by the political aspects of regulation. Moreover, the cost reducing effort of the operators is greater under fixed-price regimes, compared to the cost-plus case.

Contract choice, incentives, and political capture in public transport services

We consider a framework of contractual interactions between public transport authorities and transport operators. We estimate simultaneously the contract choice by the authorities and the effect of regulation on the cost-reducing activity of the operators. We test whether the current regulatory schemes are the observable items of a complex menu of contracts, as proposed by Laffont and Tirole. We suggest that the generation process of the data we have in hand is better explained by a regulatory framework where an unsophisticated regulator is politically motivated. We show how these political preferences shape the contract choice and we shed light on how operating costs are affected. On average, operators' costs are 12.1% lower under fixed-plus regimes, compared to the cost-plus cases.

Incentive Regulatory policies: The Case of Public Transit Systems in France

This paper is aimed at assessing the empirical relevance of the new theory of regulation. It relies on a principal-agent framework for studying the regulatory schemes used in the French urban transport industry. Taking the current regulatory schemes as given, the model of supply and demand provides estimates for the firms' inefficiency, the effort of managers, and the cost of public funds. It allows deriving the first-best and second-best regulatory policies for each network and comparing them with the actual situation in terms of welfare loss or gain. Fixed-price policies are lying between fully informed and uninformed second best schemes. Cost-plus contracts are dominated by any type of second-best contract. From these results, we may conjecture that fixed prices contracts call for better informed regulators.

Welfare Tradeoffs in U.S. Rail Mergers

The renegotiation of regulatory contracts is known to prevent regulators from achieving the full commitment efficient outcome in dynamic contexts. However, assessing the cost of such renegotiation remains an open issue from an empirical viewpoint. To address this question, we fit a structural principal-agent model with renegotiation on a set of urban transport service contracts. The model captures two important features of the industry. First, only two types of contracts are used in practice (fixed-price and cost-plus). Second, subsidies increase over time. We compare a scenario with renegotiation and a hypothetical situation with full commitment. We conclude that the welfare gains from improving commitment would be significant but would accrue mostly to operators.