Private roads; auctions and competition in networks

This paper studies the efficiency impacts of private toll roads in initially untolled networks. The analysis allows for capacity and toll choice by private operators, and endogenises entry and therewith the degree of competition, distinguishing and allowing for both parallel and serial competition. Two institutional arrangements are considered, namely one in which entry is free and one in which it is allowed only after winning an auction in which patronage is to be maximised. Both regimes have the second-best zero-profit equilibrium as the end-state of the equilibrium sequence of investments; but the auctions regime approaches this end-state more rapidly: tolls are set equal to their second-best zero-profit levels immediately, and capacity additions for the earlier investments are bigger. When discreteness of capacity is relevant and limits the number of investments that can be accommodated practically, the auctions regime may therefore still result in a more efficient end-state, with a higher social surplus, although the theoretical end-state is the same as under free entry

The economics of airport congestion pricing

Conventional economic wisdom suggests that congestion pricing would be an appropriate response to cope with the growing congestion levels currently experienced at many airports. Several characteristics of aviation markets, however, may make naive congestion prices equal to the value of marginal travel delays a non-optimal response. This paper develops a model of airport pricing that captures a number of these features. The model in particular reflects that (1) airlines typically have market power and are engaged in oligopolistic competition at different sub-markets; (2) part of external travel delays that aircraft impose are internal to an operator and hence should not be accounted for in congestion tolls; and (3) different airports in an international network will typically not be regulated by the same authority. We present an analytical treatment for a simple two-node network and some numerical results to illustrate our findings. Some main conclusions are that second-best optimal tolls are typically lower than what would be suggested by congestion costs alone and may even be negative, and that cooperation between regulators need not be stable but that non-cooperation may lead to welfare losses also when compared to a no-tolling situation. © 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved