Special interest groups and 4th best transport pricing

Abstract

This paper is organized as follows. In order to explain the basic idea of 4th best pricing more fully the following Section 2 will sketch and discuss the above mentioned Laffont model, where it is shown that under certain conditions a uniform tariff may be preferable to an optional tariff because such a uniform tariff is less amenable to the influence of interest groups. Section 3 will illustrate Laffont?s insight with several examples from the transport sector. Section 4 will conclude. --