718 research outputs found
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
Intermodal competition in the London-Paris passenger market: High-speet rail and air transport
This paper studies inter- and intramodal competition in the London-Paris passenger market. Using revealed preference data, we estimate nested and mixed multinomial logit models to examine passenger behaviour in the London-Paris market. We present a case study on the relocation of Eurostar services from Waterloo International to St Pancras International station. The results show that competition is present in this market. Demand is elastic, and passengers are heterogeneous in their valuation of fares and accessibility. Aviation and high-speed rail are homogenous in unobserved effects. The large market share of the Eurostar and the withdrawal of aviation alternatives indicate that competition will decline in the long-run
Natural cytotoxic macrophages in the peritoneal cavity of mice.
Many strains of mice from various breeding institutes have natural cytotoxic macrophages. These macrophages can also be present in nude mice, suggesting that this cytotoxicity can be acquired without invovlvement of T cells. The natural cytotoxicity was non-specific for tumour cells, was not sensitive to trypsin treatment, was lost after 5 days incubation, but could be enhanced by foetal bovine serum. The presence of cytotoxic macrophages in the peritoneal cavity was not genetically or age controlled. Natural cytotoxic macrophages did not occur in germ-free mice. The possible causes of natural cytotoxicity are discussed
Choice of departure station by railway users
This paper applies a multinomial logit model to the choice of a departure railway station by Dutch
railway passengers. This is a relevant theme since about 50% of Dutch railway passengers do not travel
via the nearest railway station. The passengers’ choices for departure stations are aggregated at the four
digit postal code area level. We applied three functional forms for the underlying systematic utility of a
station, namely a linear effect of attributes, cross effect of distance and frequency of service, and a
translog formulation on distance and frequency of train services. With 3,498 post code areas and 360
railway stations our analysis found consistent effect sizes for distance, frequency of service, intercity
status of the station and the presence of park-and-ride facility on the choice of departure station. The
effect of distance on the choice of a departure station declines smoothly. The effect of frequency of
service is relatively small compared to the effect of distance. A frequency of service increase by a
hundred trains per day is equivalent to being 600 m closer to the station. The Intercity status of the station
plays the biggest role in the choice of departure station. It has an equivalent effect of a change in 2 km
distance or about a frequency of service of 300 trains per day. In addition, the presence of park-and-ride
facility in the station poses a sizable effect in the departure station choice. In most cases its effect reaches
about 35% of the intercity status effect
The effects of railway investments in a polycentric city
This paper analyses the effect of railway investment on land prices and land use in a polycentric city under various regulatory regimes of land markets. The introduction of a faster mode of transport (train), accessible in discrete locations leads to an extended city size. The stations of the “fast” mode attract dense residential settlements. As a result, the average residential and commercial land rents increase in both the competitive and segmented land market situations, as compared with the “slow” unimodal transport case. When rail investments only serve one particular centre, this leads to the growth of the advantaged centre at the expense of the other centre. Generally speaking, investment in the fast mode results in city growth and increase in rent receipts. However the effect of the investment for individual centres and their corresponding residential areas depends on the underlying land market assumptions and the level of investment. Distorted land markets lead to increases in commercial rents, but this is more than off-set by the decrease in residential land rent
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