research development and firm growth empirical evidence from european top r d spending firms abstract following recent literature we present a model of endogenous firm growth with r d investment as one of the main mechanisms of growth our study evidences a positive effect of r d intensity on the sales growth by using ols quantile regressions and gmm system estimators for a sample of 754 european firms for the 2003 2007 period we also find this association is more intense in high growth firms and is especially significant when referring to high technology sectors this paper gives empirical support to those recommendations from policy makers and business leaders for maintaining the r d expenditures especially in high technology sectors even when facing a recession

economies of traffic density in the deregulated airline industry this article estimates a structural model of competition among hub and spoke airlines in order to measure the strength of economies of traffic density on individual route segments we find that economies of density were strong during the sample period fourth quarter 1985 stronger than previous estimates by douglas caves laurits christensen and michael tretheway derived from traditional cost function methods we also find that the airlines competitive behavior was far from collusive in the markets under study markets requiring a connection at a hub airport our structural model also provides plausible estimates of demand elasticities we use our estimates to provide a cost based rationale for the major changes in the structure of the industry following deregulation for example the increase in airport and industry wide concentration and the increase in competition at the city pair market level and to simulate the effects of a merger of airlines that share a hub

universal service obligations in ldcs the effect of uniform pricing on infrastructure access abstract this paper develops a model to analyze the impacts of asymmetric information on optimal universal service policy in the public utilities of developing countries optimal universal service policy is implemented using two regulatory instruments pricing and network investment under discriminatory pricing asymmetric information leads to a higher price and smaller network in the rural area than under full information under uniform pricing the price is also lower but the network is even smaller in addition under both pricing regimes not only the firm but also taxpayers have incentives to collude with the regulator

price wars and price collusion in china s airline markets in the absence of an effective antitrust law both fare wars and price collusion have been pervasive in china s airline markets causing concern for both airlines and consumers a study of monthly airfare data from 2002 to 2004 confirms that fare wars occur periodically as well as price collusion both tend to be short lived the fact that collusion is more likely to occur in january and april when demand is high as revealed by china eastern s and china southern s price war and collusion models has been confirmed by interview information obtained from the airlines sales managers however there is also evidence in these models suggesting that collusion can be more easily formed when demand is low high airport concentration measured by the hhi may facilitate collusion in certain circumstances but it may also lead to more price wars under other conditions concentration in both airports and routes does not appear to systematically affect the occurrence of fare wars and collusion in all the models estimated we also reject the possibility that mutual forbearance due to multimarket contact plays any important anti competitive role in china s airline markets

on the transfer of technology from universities the impact of the bayh dole act of 1980 on the institutionalization of university research abstract while the academic and policy literature has focused on patent counts and patent quality as possible outcome measures to evaluate the impact of the u s bayh dole act of 1980 we argue that the impact of the act on university effort to transfer its technology to the private sector might be seen more accurately by examining the trend in the initial establishment of technology transfer offices ttos using an econometric framework to identify the presence of multiple structural breaks in data on the annual number of university ttos we find multiple break dates over the period 1925 to 2014 one break date was in the late 1960s and a second break date occurred about 1982 we suggest in contrast to previous findings in the literature that the act did have an impact on the formal internal transfer of technology from universities through patenting by providing an incentive for universities to invest in a tto research infrastructure we also suggest that our empirical methodology is applicable to an assessment of the impact of legislation similar to the bayh dole act in the many countries with such legislation

infrastructure and development a critical appraisal of the macro level literature this survey reviews the existing macro level empirical literature on the link between infrastructure and development outcomes in a critical light after providing a general framework that casts the relevant terms of the controversy on the real effect of infrastructure on growth in the context of an aggregate production function it signals what are the relevant empirical questions to be addressed this guides the systematic review of a number of empirical studies and the discussion of the main econometric challenges to the identification of the effect of infrastructure on output and productivity finally building on related research in particular in contract theory and political economy the paper spells out several promising research avenues

should congestion tolls be set by the government or by the private sector the knight pigou debate revisited this paper clarifies issues debated by a c pigou and frank knight about correcting inefficient use of congestible resources focusing for concreteness on their original example of road congestion instead of government imposed pigouvian access fees knight favoured access fees set by private toll setters we consider the case of n 2 congestible roads and an uncongestible road of arbitrary speed knight argued that in the case of a single congestible road a private toll setter would always choose the toll that pigou recommended hence the allocation would minimize aggregate commute time without government meddling we find instead that two or more toll setters would never choose pigouvian tolls except in the special case of a sufficiently fast uncongestible road moreover for uncongestible roads of slower speed the allocation of motorists under knight s proposal is almost never efficient whenever it is inefficient motorists are strictly worse off when they pay tolls set by private firms instead of paying government imposed tolls and aggregate toll revenue is also lower nevertheless if the private sector does set tolls then the full cost to motorists can be limited if the government provides an uncongestible alternative such as a train to offer potential competition along the same route

airport congestion when carriers have market power this paper analyzes airport congestion when carriers are nonatomistic showing how the results of the road pricing literature are modified when the economic agents causing congestion have market power the analysis shows that when an airport is dominated by a monopolist congestion is fully internalized yielding no role for congestion pricing under monopoly conditions under a cournot oligopoly however carriers are shown to internalize only the congestion they impose on themselves a toll that captures the uninternalized portion of congestion may then improve the allocation of traffic the analysis is supported by some rudimentary empirical evidence

distributional consequences of airport congestion pricing abstract imposition of airport congestion pricing redistributes welfare among commercial regional and general aviation this article extends daniel s econometrica63 327 370 1995 stochastic bottleneck model with dynamically adjusting traffic rates queuing delays and congestion fees to include elastic demand heterogeneous operating time preferences and heterogeneous layover and queuing time values using parameters from minneapolis st paul airport simulations of congestion pricing determine its effects on equilibrium traffic patterns queuing delays schedule delays airport revenues and social welfare gains by commercial aviation common travelers and airport authorities exceed losses by general and regional aviation the article evaluates several price and rebate programs and proposes several that are self financing and pareto improving

airport charges and capacity expansion effects of concessions and privatization abstract this paper examines the decisions on airport charges and capacity expansion made by airports with different objectives we find that allowing an airport to have profitable concession operations may be more welfare improving than the alternative of depriving the airport of all profits from concession operations furthermore the airport charge of a social welfare maximizing airport would be lower than that of a budget constrained public airport which in turn would be lower than that of a privatized airport pursuing profit maximization we also show that a constrained public airport would add capacity later than a social welfare maximizing airport whilst a privatized airport would add capacity later still given that constrained public airports represent the second best situation the capacity decisions of privatized airports would be socially suboptimal

the economics of international codesharing an analysis of airline alliances abstract international airline alliances allow airlines to coordinate their operations in providing international service this paper analyzes the effect of such alliances on traffic levels fares and welfare in the model the benefits of alliances arise because cooperative pricing of trips by the partners puts downward pressure on fares in the interline city pair markets these are markets where travel on both carriers is necessary the loss of competition in the interhub market which connects the hub cites of the partners generates a countervailing effect tending to raise the fare in that market while the presence of economies of traffic density complicates these impacts by generating cost links across markets simulation analysis shows that the above tendencies typically prevail welfare analysis shows that both consumer and total surplus typically rise following formation of an alliance despite the harm to interhub passengers suggesting that the positive effects of alliances may outweigh any negative impacts

toward a theory of regulation for developing countries following jean jacques laffont s lead the efficient operation and expansion of infrastructures in developing countries is crucial for growth and poverty reduction however recent reforms aimed at improving the performance of these sectors have had limited success evidence suggests that in many instances this was because the traditional regulatory theory relied on by policymakers was not suitable for the institutional context in developing countries this article surveys more recent theoretical work focusing on problems with regulation in these countries at the heart of the survey is the work of jean jacques laffont who in the last decade of his life set about developing a theoretical framework for regulation in developing countries we consider the implications of his work which focused on the key institutional limitations faced in developing countries we then discuss where experience suggests that there are important omissions from this modeling bringing in extensions and alternative approaches pursued by other authors we conclude by summarizing the key ways in which regulatory policy will be different when institutions are weak overall we find that an understanding of the institutional context and its implications are crucial when designing a regulatory framework for developing countries

endogenous trip scheduling the henderson approach reformulated and compared with the vickrey approach abstract the henderson approach to modeling peak period congestion lacks equilibria when lateness is prohibited this paper reformulates the henderson approach and compares it to the vickrey approach both analytically and numerically the behavior of the reformulated henderson approach varies with its elasticity of travel delay with respect to traffic flow while the vickrey approach lacks such flexibility the behavior of the vickrey approach is the limit of that of the reformulated henderson approach as the elasticity of travel delay goes to infinity

the economics of hubs the case of monopoly in this paper we study the optimization problem of an unregulated air carrier which is given the exclusive right to satisfy demand for air travel between any pair of cities it chooses a network of connections and a set of prices to maximize profits thus both network design and prices are endogenous we characterize the solution to this optimization problem when demands and costs are symmetric our main result is that if there are economies of density in the number of individuals travelling between two directly connected cities the optimal network is either a hub of size n 1 or one in which every pair of cities is connected directly

efficiency analysis of cournot competition in service industries with congestion we consider cournot competition in the presence of congestion effects our model consists of several service providers with differentiated services each competing for users who are sensitive to both price and congestion we distinguish two types of congestion effects depending on whether spillover costs exist that is where one service provider s congestion cost increases with the other providers output level we quantify the efficiency of an unregulated oligopoly with respect to the optimal social welfare with tight upper and lower bounds we show that when there is no spillover the welfare loss in an unregulated oligopoly is limited to 25 of the social optimum even in the presence of highly convex costs on the other hand when spillover cost is present there does not exist a constant lower bound on the efficiency of an unregulated oligopoly even with affine cost we show that the efficiency depends on the relative magnitude between the marginal spillover cost and the marginal benefit to consumers this paper was accepted by christian terwiesch operations management

congestion pricing and capacity of large hub airports a bottleneck model with stochastic queues this paper models and estimates congestion prices and capacity for large hub airports the model includes stochastic queues time varying traffic rates and endogenous intertemporal adjustment of traffic in response to queuing delay and fees relative costs of queuing and schedule delays are estimated using data from minneapolis st paul simulations calculate equilibrium traffic patterns queuing delays schedule delays congestion fees airport revenues airport capacity and efficiency gains the paper also investigates whether a dominant airline internalizes delays its aircraft impose it tests game theoretic specifications with atomistic nash dominant stackelberg dominant and collusive airline traffic

the evolving state of the art in technology transfer research revisiting the contingent effectiveness model the purpose of our study is to review and synthesize the rapidly evolving literature on technology transfer effectiveness our paper provides a lens into relatively recent work focusing particularly on empirical studies of us technology transfer conducted within the last 15 years in doing so we update and extend the contingent effectiveness model of technology transfer developed by bozeman 2000 specifically we include the growing interest in social and public value oriented technology transfer and thus the contingent effectiveness model is expanded to consider this literature we categorize studies according their approaches to measuring effectiveness draw conclusions regarding the current state of technology transfer evaluation and offer recommendations for future studies

regulation of road accident externalities when insurance companies have market power abstract accident externalities that individual drivers impose on one another via their presence on the road are among the most important external costs of road transport we study the regulation of these externalities when insurance companies have market power some of the results we derive have close resemblance to the earlier literature on externality regulation with market power in aviation and private roads but there are important differences too using analytical models we compare the first best public welfare maximizing outcome with a private profit maximizing monopoly and oligopoly we find that insurance companies will internalize some of the externalities depending on their degree of market power we derive optimal insurance premiums and regular parametric taxes as well as manipulable ones that make the companies set socially optimal premiums the latter take into account that the firm tries to exploit knowledge of the tax rule applied by the government finally we also study the taxation of road users rather than that of firms

on input market surplus and its relation to the downstream market game in order to analyze the welfare effects of price changes in input markets following for example a price fixing conspiracy economists have studied the relationship between the surplus measured in the input markets and the surplus in the output markets the latest results hinge on simplifying assumptions which are relaxed here by linking the input markets surplus question to another stream of literature which characterizes functions that oligopolists collectively yet unintentionally maximize it is shown that the area under the input demands is equal to the change in a function for which critical points coincide with the equilibria of the downstream game a particular case of these functions is the exact potential function afin d analyser les effets de bien etre des changements de prix dans le marche des intrants a la suite par exemple d une conspiration pour fixer les prix les economistes ont etudie la relation entre le surplus mesure dans les marches des intrants et le surplus dans les marches des produits les derniers resultats dependent de postulats simplificateurs qu on relaxe ici en reliant la question du surplus dans les marches des intrants avec un autre courant de la litterature specialisee qui caracterise les fonctions que les oligopoleurs collectivement mais sans en faire leur but avoue maximisent on montre que l espace sous les courbes de demandes des intrants est egal au changement dans une fonction pour laquelle les points critiques coincident avec les equilibres dans le jeu de marche en aval un cas particulier de ces fonctions est la fonction potentielle exacte

the evolution of u s airline competition studies by academic economists were a significant force in the movement towards deregulation of the domestic airline industry in the early 1970s levine 1965 jordan 1970 keeler 1972 douglas and miller 1974 during the critical 1977 78 period in which deregulation was imposed first de facto by the civil aeronautics board cab and then de jure by congress the chairman and vice chairman of the cab were economists for the 14 years since deregulation economists have continued intensive study of the industry in part because of the unusual availability of reliable firm and transaction level data and in part because of the rare opportunity to observe an industry as it evolves from strict economic regulation to fairly unimpeded competition and strategic behavior the simplest prediction of economists about airline deregulation and one of the few on which nearly all economists agreed was that deregulation would improve consumer welfare in comparison to continued price and entry regulation fourteen years later nearly all economists still agree on this though the degree of enthusiasm for the deregulation outcome varies considerably there was substantial disagreement among economists about the market structure that would result because studies of scale economies in the airline industry had concluded that none existed beyond the scale of the smaller major airlines of the 1970s caves 1962 eads et al 1969 many economists argued that deregulation would result in more than the 11 major airlines that existed at the time of deregulation others predicted that only a few or possibly only one airline would survive at a large scale two noted university of chicago economists sam peltzman and lester telser made a bet in 1979 on whether

air travel choices in multi airport markets abstract we study how air travel consumers departing from a multi airport region trade off across airport and airline supply characteristics we empirically investigate this trade off by estimating a weighted conditional logit model of airport airline choice using survey data on travels departing from one of three san francisco bay area airports and arriving at one of four airports in greater los angeles in october 1995 non price characteristics like airport access time airport delay flight frequency the availability of particular airport airline combinations and early arrival times are found to strongly affect choice probabilities we calculate marginal effects and counterfactual scenarios to compare the values of these characteristics among each other and across traveler type in order to examine the robustness of the conditional logit model we estimate a mixed logit model and find that the results are similar we attribute the similarity to our strictly defined travel market and to our distinction between leisure and business travelers thus controlling for two important sources of consumer heterogeneity we consider the implications of our empirical findings on vertical integration between airlines and airports on the effectiveness of airport dominance and on the competitive effect of entry by low cost carriers

third degree price discrimination in the presence of congestion externality this paper analyzes third degree price discrimination of a monopoly airline in the presence of congestion externality when all markets are served the model features the business passenger and leisure passenger markets where business passengers exhibit a higher time valuation and a less price elastic demand than leisure passengers our main result is the identification of the time valuation effect of price discrimination which can work in the opposite direction as the well known output effect on welfare this time valuation effect clearly explains why discriminating prices can improve welfare even when this is associated with a reduction in aggregate output

congestible facility rivalry in vertical structures abstract this paper investigates rivalry between congestible facilities and its effects on facility charges capacities and congestion delays by incorporating the downstream carriers into the analysis we find that i the duopoly facilities have lower prices than the monopolist but they offer lower service quality only if capacity decisions are made prior to facility price decisions when the capacity and price decisions are made simultaneously the duopolists will provide the same service quality as the monopolist ii conditional on facility charges the monopolist will have the same capacity investment rules as the central planner if and only if the downstream carrier markets are perfectly competitive at both facilities if there is one carrier market that is imperfectly competitive the monopoly capacity rules will be different from the socially optimal capacity rules iii the monopolist will offer the same service quality at a facility as the central planner if the carrier market is perfectly competitive otherwise the monopolist offers a higher service level than the central planner we also find that for given capacities a the duopolists equilibrium prices increase with the time costs of either consumers or carriers b entrance of a new carrier to any of the facilities depresses the prices charged by both facilities and c lower marginal cost of the carriers at one facility induces a higher price at that facility but a lower price at the other facility

airport and airline competition for passengers departing from a large metropolitan area abstract in this paper an airport and airline choice model based on a nested multinomial logit model is developed to investigate both airport competition and airline competition in a metropolitan area with multiple departure airports the model can be used to analyze the effects of e g an improvement in accessibility of a specific airport in a metropolitan area it is shown analytically that if the frequency elasticity of demand is smaller than 1 unique airfare frequency and passenger charge equilibria exist next symmetric equilibria are derived analytically their properties are also examined finally asymmetric equilibria are derived numerically while their properties are discussed as well

compatibility and competition in airlines demand side network effects abstract network effects arising in air transport markets are usually viewed as resulting from the implications of joint production on the cost side in this paper we focus on network effects originating on the demand side we consider a network that links three cities involving two direct and one indirect connection two carriers with asymmetric traffic rights on this network compete sequentially at the first stage they choose their departure times at the second they set prices we show that in order to compensate its network disadvantage the weak carrier chooses its departure time as close as possible to its competitor s this is in contrast to the usual maximum differentiation principle the network effect intensifies price competition depending on the size of the market and on consumers valuation of waiting time various subgame perfect equilibrium configurations are exhibited

services trade protection and economic isolation poor connectivity is conventionally blamed on difficult geography and low income but economic isolation could also result from policy choices in key linking services such as air transportation and telecommunications a new database on applied services trade policies reveals that many countries restrict trade in the very services that connect them with the rest of the world we present evidence that restrictive policies lead to more concentrated market structures and limited access to services even after taking into account the influence of geography and income moving from an intermediate level of restrictiveness to an open regime could lead to a 20 percentage point increase in cellular teledensity in the telecommunications sector and to a 25 per cent increase in flight connections per airline in the aviation sector respectively

airport pricing congestion tolls lumpy investment and cost recovery abstract in this paper we investigate the relationship between congestion tolls and capacity expansion costs for congestion prone transportation infrastructures with lumpy investment with constant variable costs and social marginal cost pricing this relationship determines the cost recovery status of an infrastructure authority the theoretical model for optimal user charges and the timing of capacity expansion shows that the relative magnitudes of total congestion tolls and total capacity costs in an investment cycle depend on the time pattern of traffic growth a point overlooked in the literature a queuing model is used to conduct a numerical experiment to determine the cost recovery ratios under various time paths of traffic growth

public technology transfer commercialization and business growth abstract this study analyzes the conditions for the commercialization of public technologies transferred to the private sector and the subsequent effect on business growth we focus on the commercial exploitation of technologies transferred by universities and public research institutes u pris to companies the empirical analysis uses detailed information regarding an extensive set of actual instances of public private technology transfer in korea 514 cases of technologies transferred by 43 major u pris to highlight the role of company absorptive capacity and internal innovation capabilities cooperation with u pris and the intensity of market competition in determining commercialization success and business growth we find that the intensity of market competition significantly influenced the paths along which absorptive capacity and internal innovation capacity affected successful commercialization and successful commercialization in turn affected business growth effective partnership is a key factor of the successful commercialization of transferred technologies irrespective of market situations absorptive capacity contributes to their short term success and long term growth when market competition is strong

optimal pricing of flights and passengers at congested airports and the efficiency of atomistic charges abstract this paper investigates and compares airport pricing policies under various types of competition considering both per passenger and per flight charges at congested airports we show that an airport requires both pricing instruments to achieve the first best outcome and we distinguish their role by showing that congestion externalities need to be addressed through per flight tolls whereas the inefficiency caused by airlines market power exertion must be corrected with per passenger subsidies we also show that bertrand competition with differentiated products a type of behavior recently pointed out by the empirical literature as pertinent has policy implications that diverge from analyses that assume cournot competition the welfare gains and congestion reductions of congestion pricing would be higher than what has been advanced before the degree of self financing of airport infrastructure under optimal pricing would be increased and may approach exact self financing and the implied differentiation of charges between asymmetric airlines would be significantly smaller presumably enhancing the political feasibility of welfare maximizing congestion pricing as the potential distributional concerns would be decreased finally we numerically analyze second best policies and find that atomistic pricing may offer a relatively attractive alternative to first best congestion pricing

congestion agglomeration and the structure of cities abstract congestion costs in urban areas are significant and clearly represent a negative externality nonetheless economists also recognize the production advantages of urban density in the form of positive agglomeration externalities the long run equilibrium outcomes in economies with multiple correlated but offsetting externalities have yet to be fully explored in the literature therefore i develop a spatial equilibrium model of urban structure that includes both congestion costs and agglomeration externalities i then estimate the structural parameters of the model using a computational algorithm to match the spatial distribution of employment population land use land rents and commute times in the data policy simulations based on the estimates suggest that congestion pricing may have ambiguous consequences for economic welfare

the equity and efficiency of runway pricing abstract this paper poses and answers the following question if an airport authority is assumed to choose landing fees that maximize a weighted sum of airline consumers surpluses subject to a revenue requirement what set of weights is implied by currently observed fees the model is loosely applied to san francisco international airport the main result is that commuter airlines are much more favored than others

atomistic congestion tolls at concentrated airports seeking a unified view in the internalization debate abstract the goal of this paper is to bring some unity to the theoretical side of the debate on internalization of airport congestion by showing that all the literature s theoretical results can be derived within one simple and unified framework the analysis starts by replicating the results of brueckner brueckner j k 2002 airport congestion when carriers have market power american economic review 92 1357 1375 who showed that because airlines behaving in cournot fashion internalize congestion they should be charged low congestion tolls the analysis then validates the findings of daniel daniel j i 1995 congestion pricing and capacity of large hub airports a bottleneck model with stochastic queues econometrica 63 327 370 who argued that larger atomistic tolls are required in a model where a stackelberg leader interacts with competitive fringe airlines however it is shown that this result only holds approximately when the carriers outputs are imperfect substitutes

regulation innovation and the introduction of new telecommunications services i examine the effects of fcc regulation on the innovation and introduction of advanced telecommunications services in the united states an interim of lighter regulation provides an experiment to test the regulatory regime s impact the econometric model comprises an arrival process for service innovation followed by a duration process for regulatory delay the number of services the firms created during the interim is 60 99 higher than the model predicts they would have created if the stricter regulation had still been in place overall firms would have introduced 62 more services to consumers during the study period if the regulation had not been in place

innovation and firm growth does firm age play a role this paper explores the relationship between innovation and firm growth for firms of different ages we hypothesize that young firms undertake riskier innovation activities which may have greater performance benefits if successful or greater losses if unsuccessful using an extensive spanish community innovation survey sample for the period 2004 2012 we apply panel quantile regressions to study the effect of r d activities on firm growth i e sales growth productivity growth and employment growth our results show that young firms face larger performance benefits from r d at the upper quantiles of the growth rate distribution but face larger decline at the lower quantiles r d investment by young firms therefore appears to significantly riskier than r d investment by more mature firms which suggests some policy implications

mobility and redistribution the ability of individuals to move freely from one jurisdiction to another is generally seen as a constraint on the amount of redistribution that each jurisdiction within a system of governments can undertake in this paper we look at this proposition by developing a positive analysis of income redistribution by local governments in a federal system we ask how much redistribution occurs when only local governments can have tax transfer instruments individuals can move freely among jurisdictions and voters in each jurisdiction are fully aware of the migration effects of redistributive policies local redistribution is shown to induce sorting of the population with the poorest households located in the communities that provide the most redistribution while the threat of out migration affects the potential for redistribution our results suggest that significant local redistribution is nonetheless feasible numerical computations indicate that the proportion of residents who are renters is a major factor affecting the local choice of level of redistribution

comparison of three empirical models of airport congestion pricing abstract we compare three empirical models of airport congestion pricing a standard peak load pricing model with econometrically estimated demand and delay functions morrison 7 morrison and winston 8 a deterministic bottleneck model with traffic adjusting intertemporally to congestion prices vickrey 9 arnott et al 2 and a bottleneck model with time dependent stochastic queuing daniel 4 when implemented using daniel s airport traffic data the models produce similar traffic patterns under weight based pricing but differ significantly under congestion pricing we conclude that structural modeling of stochastic traffic queues and intertemporal substitution is necessary to produce realistic responses of traffic patterns to congestion pricing

low level versus high level equilibrium in public utility services abstract heterogeneity of public utility services is common in developing countries in a high level equilibrium the quality of utility services is high consumer willingness to pay for services is high the utility is well funded and staff well paid in order to induce high quality of performance in a low level equilibrium the opposite is the case which alternative occurs depends on both the quality of utility management and public perceptions about service quality if a utility administration has the potential to offer high quality service and the public is aware of this high quality equilibrium also requires the public s service payments to be high enough to fund the needed pay incentives for the utility staff when the public lacks knowledge about the utility administration s quality the public s initial beliefs about the utility administration s quality will also influence their willingness to pay sufficiently for a high quality equilibrium to be realized this paper shows that with low confidence only a low level equilibrium may exist while with higher initial confidence a high level equilibrium becomes possible intermediate in between the low and high level outcomes can also occur in early periods with high level outcomes later on

the value of scarce water measuring the inefficiency of municipal regulations abstract rather than allowing urban water prices to reflect scarcity rents during periods of drought induced excess demand policy makers have mandated command and control approaches primarily rationing the use of water outdoors while such policies are ubiquitous and likely inefficient economists have not had access to sufficient data to estimate their economic impact using unique panel data on residential end uses of water in 11 north american cities we examine the welfare implications of urban water rationing in response to drought using estimates of expected marginal prices that vary both across and within markets we estimate price elasticities specific to indoor and outdoor water use our results suggest that current policies do target water uses that households themselves are most willing to forgo nevertheless we find that rationing outdoor water in cities has costly welfare implications primarily due to household heterogeneity in willingness to pay for scarce water we find that replacing rationing policies with a market clearing drought price would result in welfare gains of more than 29 of what households in the sample spend each year on water

congestion pricing of canadian airports abstract under congestion pricing canadian airports would annually save between 72 and 105 million social costs per landing and takeoff decrease about 300 at toronto and vancouver and 50 at calgary and montreal slot constraints fail to eliminate this airport congestion congestion prices are lower on average than existing weight based prices current airport capacity accommodates at least five more years of traffic growth before congestion reaches current levels substantial welfare gains occur even if dominant airlines already internalize their self imposed delays this article calculates equilibrium congestion pricing schedules traffic rates queuing delays layover times and connection times by time of day

dynamic oligopoly behaviour in the airline industry abstract this paper examines the dynamic interaction between united airlines and american airlines on a set of duopoly routes we estimate quarterly conduct parameters or conjectural variations and test constant behaviour bertrand cournot and collusive models we also test two regimeswitching models derived from the green porter price war model one based on reversion to bertrand behaviour during price wars the other on reversion to cournot behaviour the three constant behaviour models are all rejected the regime switching models can both describe the data but the cournot based version is preferred

pricing the major us hub airports abstract implementing congestion pricing at 27 major us airports would reduce delays by 13 passenger years and 1000 aircraft hours every day saving 3 5 million dollars daily chicago and atlanta would save about 1000 dollars per aircraft airport revenues would increase about 11 million dollars daily a bottleneck model with stochastic queues estimates substantial welfare gains whether or not airlines internalize self imposed delays erroneously imposing fees from the non internalizing specification on internalizing airlines however would be a costly mistake the model calculates equilibrium traffic rates queuing delays layover times connection times and congestion fee schedules by minute of the day

effects of asymmetric information on airport congestion management mechanisms abstract we study and compare three different mechanisms for capacity slot allocation in a congested airport when airlines have one dimensional private information direct allocation of slots differentiated tolls and slot auctions with perfect information direct allocation is a first best policy which can be implemented through pigouvian taxes or slot auctions the mechanisms are equivalent in terms of social welfare with the introduction of asymmetric information this equivalence is lost direct allocation is always ex post inefficient and in some cases tolls and subsequent quantity delegation is a better alternative social welfare wise auctions may be superior or inferior to tolls we further show that naive application of pigouvian tolls is sub optimal when imperfect information exists

sorting by foot travel for local public goods and equilibrium stratification we re examine tiebout s hypothesis of endogenous sorting in a competitive spatial equilibrium framework by considering both income and preference heterogeneity and by allowing agents to decide endogenously the number of visits to a travel for local public good the equilibrium configuration may be completely segregated incompletely segregated or completely integrated depending on relative market rents and income preference local tax parameters a segregated equilibrium may feature endogenous sorting purely by income or by both income and preferences while the rich need not be closer to the local public facility site multiple equilibria may arise when the equilibrium configuration is incompletely segregated jel classification d50 h41 classification par deplacement biens publics locaux accessibles par deplacement et stratification d equilibre les auteurs reexaminent l hypothese de tiebout de classification endogene dans un cadre d equilibre spatial concurrentiel en tenant compte a la fois de l heterogeneite des revenus et des preferences ainsi qu en permettant aux agents de decider de maniere endogene du nombre de visites pour se procurer un bien public local par deplacement il peut s ensuivre des equilibres de segregation complete de segregation incomplete ou d integration complete selon les rentes relatives et les parametres de revenus de preferences ou de fiscalite locale un equilibre de segregation peut entrainer une classification endogene sur la base seulement des revenus ou sur la base des revenus et des preferences alors que les riches n ont pas besoin d etre plus proches du site du bien public local des equilibres multiples peuvent surgir quand la configuration d equilibre en est une de segregation incomplete

the economics of airport congestion pricing abstract 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

airlines strategic interactions and airport pricing in a dynamic bottleneck model of congestion abstract this paper analyzes efficient pricing at a congested airport dominated by a single firm unlike much of the previous literature we combine a dynamic bottleneck model of congestion and a vertical structure model that explicitly considers the role of airlines and passengers we show that a stackelberg leader interacting with a competitive fringe partially internalizes congestion and that there are various toll regimes that induce the welfare maximizing outcome widening the set of choices for regulators in particular charging the congestion toll that would apply for fully competitive carriers and that ignores any internalization to both the leader and the fringe yields the first best outcome

price vs quantity based approaches to airport congestion management abstract this paper analyzes price and quantity based approaches to management of airport congestion using a model where airlines are asymmetric and internalize congestion under these circumstances optimal congestion tolls are differentiated across carriers and a uniformity requirement on airport charges as occurs when slots are sold or tolls are uniform distorts carrier flight choices flight volumes tend to be too low for large carriers and too high for small carriers but quantity based regimes where the airport authority allocates a fixed number of slots via free distribution or an auction lead carriers to treat total flight volume and thus congestion as fixed and this difference generates an efficient outcome as long as the number of slots is optimally chosen

systematic peak load pricing congestion premia and demand diverting empirical evidence abstract this paper finds empirical support to systematic peak load pricing in airlines higher fares in ex ante known congested periods it estimates a congestion premia and supports the main empirical prediction in gale and holmes gale i holmes t 1993 advance purchase discounts and monopoly allocation of capacity american economic review 83 135 146 less discount seats on peak flights

prices capacities and service levels in a congestible bertrand duopoly we study the duopolistic interaction between congestible facilities that supply perfect substitutes and that make sequential decisions on capacities and prices the consumers time cost of accessing or using a facility is determined by the volume capacity ratio we analyze duopoly prices capacities and service quality defined as the inverse of time costs of using the facility and compare the results to monopoly and first best outcomes findings include the following first while price competition between duopolists is beneficial for consumers introducing capacity competition is harmful the duopolist offers lower service quality than the monopolist who does provide the socially optimal quality level second higher marginal costs of capacity may increase profits third asymmetric nash equilibria may result even when firms are ex ante identical more specifically when capacity is cheap or demand is relatively inelastic the only stable equilibria are asymmetric in such an equilibrium the large facility provides high quality at a high price and the smaller facility offers lower quality at lower prices in other words there is endogenous product differentiation by ex ante identical firms

a complete solution to a class of principal agent problems with an application to the control of a self managed firm this paper considers a class of principal agent problems which have the following features 1 there is adverse selection because the principal ignores the value of one parameter of the agent s true characteristics 2 leaving aside the information parameter the principal s welfare as well as the agent s welfare depend on two types of variables observable to both of them the first ones possibly multidimensional are called action variable s and the second one which is one dimensional has in general the meaning of a money transfer 3 the principal is a stackelberg leader of the two person game he can commit himself to decision rules which are admissible on informational grounds he optimizes within the adequate class taking into account besides the agent s reaction one constraint which has generally the meaning of an individual rationality constraint and sometimes of a feasibility constraint the optimization is limited to the class of non stochastic mechanisms 4 the problem can also receive an alternative interpretation the principal faces a continuum of agents of unknown characteristics the distribution being known however stylized principal agent problems of this type have often been considered in the economic literature in particular the reader will later be able to recognize that the standard income tax model a la mirrlees 1971 the quality or quantity choice model of the monopolist a la mussa and rosen 1978 or maskin and riley 1982 and the model of government regulation of the private monopolist of baron and myerson 1982 all belong to

why do all the flights leave at 8 am competition and departure time differentiation in airline markets abstract theoretical models of spatial product differentiation indicate that firms face two opposing incentives 1 minimize differentiation in order to steal customers from competitors and 2 maximize differentiation in order to reduce price competition using data on u s airline departure times from 1975 when fares were regulated and 1986 when fares were not regulated we empirically estimate the effect of competition on differentiation we find a negative relationship in both periods in 1986 however reductions in exogenous scheduling constraints increase differentiation implying that firms may be differentiating their products where possible to reduce price competition this effect is not apparent in the 1975 data

on the efficiency of competitive markets for operating licenses some economists and policy makers have suggested that market allocation of scarce operating licenses broadcasting licenses and airport slots for instance would lead to their efficient use this paper demonstrates that a competitive market allocation of operating licenses whether attained through auctioning selling or allowing resale of the rights does not in general assure efficiency the profit criterion that would guide the allocation of licenses in a competitive market would not necessarily lead to the uses that maximize social benefits the paper shows that the difference between private and social incentives in the allocation process can be quite large the theory is then applied to discussions of allocating airport takeoff and landing slots and broadcasting licenses

the economies of massed reserves the economy of massed reserves first mentioned by e a g robinson 1958 pp 26 27 is now firmly established in the industrial organization literature as an example of a potential plant level scale economy the massing of reserves results in a savings in the proportion of required reserves to expected output as the scale of a facility increases examples of such reserves are bank tellers specialized tools and equipment repairmen inventories spare parts and checkout lines the potential economies from massing reserves are dependent on the underlying stochastic processes governing the supply and or demand of the service provided theoretical justification for the economies of massed reserves has usually been based on an appeal to the law of large numbers for example donald hay and derek morris wrote the law of large numbers makes the number of breakdowns more predictable in a plant using a large number of machines so that the number of stand by maintenance staff need not be increased in proportion to size 1979 p 44 this paper demonstrates that the law of large numbers does not provide a theoretical explanation of massed reserves scale economies instead it is shown that the expected economies of massed reserves can be calculated from the steady state properties of well known queuing models queuing models apply to any case where a servicing input is held in reserve to cope with the stochastic nature of the market or production process in addition a method for quantifying the expected economies of queuing processes is developed the magnitude of these expected economies is shown to be significant and calculable for example the expected economies inherent in a widely applied queuing model are shown to exceed 23 percent in some cases section i establishes the irrelevance of the law of large numbers as a theory of scale economies section ii provides a formal method for determining the scale economies inherent in the most often mentioned massed reserves example machine repair section iii shows that the same method can be used to calculate scale economies for the remaining massed reserves examples specialized repair tools and equipment checkout counter clerks bank tellers and other service personnel capacity and inventories and spare parts in addition it is demonstrated that the same method can be used to calculate scale economies for some multiproduct operations

random queues and risk averse users we analyse nash equilibrium in time of use of a congested facility users are risk averse with general concave utility queues are subject to varying degrees of random sorting ranging from strict queue priority to a completely random queue we define the key no residual queue property which holds when there is no queue at the time the last user arrives at the queue and prove that this property holds in equilibrium under all queueing regimes considered the no residual queue property leads to simple results concerning the equilibrium utility of users and the timing of the queue

school quality and residential property values evidence from vancouver rezoning abstract this study utilizes changes in the catchment areas of public schools in vancouver british columbia to measure the residential price capitalization of school quality specifications that employ repeat sales methods to control for time invariant neighborhood effects and disaggregated price indexes to capture time varying neighborhood price appreciation reveal significant effects of secondary school performance on residential prices however when we add controls for long run price trends in rezoned areas only prices of residences likely to be purchased by high income families appear to have been affected by changes in school quality induced by rezoning

sequential peak load pricing the case of airports and airlines we investigate airport peak load pricing using a vertical structure of airport and airlines we find that a profit maximizing airport would charge higher peak and off peak runway prices and a higher peak off peak price differential than a public airport consequently airport privatization would lead to both fewer total passengers and fewer passengers in the peak period although peak travelling passengers benefit from fewer delays this low level of peak congestion is not efficient suggesting that airport privatization cannot be judged based on its effect on congestion alone we also examine pricing behaviour of a public airport constrained to charge a time independent price on etudie la tarification de pointe dans une structure verticale d aeroports et de compagnies d aviation on decouvre qu un aeroport qui maximise ses profits chargerait des prix plus eleves pour l usage des pistes tant aux heures de pointe qu en autre temps qu un aeroport public ainsi qu un differentiel plus grand entre ces differents moments en consequence la privatisation des aeroports va entrainer a la fois moins de passagers et moins de passagers aux heures de pointe meme si ceux qui voyagent aux heures de pointe vont devoir subir moins de delais cette moindre congestion n est pas efficace voila qui suggere qu on ne doit pas evaluer la privatisation des aeroports seulement a l aune de l impact sur la congestion les auteurs examinent aussi les strategies de tarification d un aeroport public contraint a imposer une tarification qui ne peut varier selon le moment d usage dans le temps

technical change and scale economies given stochastic demand and production abstract this paper provides a formal attempt to separate the effects of changes in scale and technology for a relatively general class of queuing models the paper makes a distinction between the output rate and capacity while changes in technology affect the output rate and lead to larger indivisible production units this change in the output rate has often been confused in the literature as a change in scale as a result the importance of scale economies claimed has often been due more to the potential for technological change not the potential for scale economies inherent to these queuing processes

in search of complementary assets the determinants of alliance formation of high tech start ups abstract why do new technology based firms ntbfs cooperate starting from teece s teece d j 1986 profiting from technological innovation implications for integration collaboration licensing and public policy research policy 15 285 305 conceptual framework and taking advantage of subsequent literature on alliance formation in the resource and competence based tradition and in the social structure perspective we derive an empirical model that aims at highlighting the inducements and obstacles that these firms face in alliance formation according to firm specific characteristics and the nature of the alliance in particular a distinction is made between exploitative commercial alliances and explorative technological alliances the econometric estimates based on a large sample of italian young high tech firms that are observed from 1994 to 2003 provide strong evidence supporting two key intuitions of teece s work first the combination of specialized complementary assets appears to be a key driver of the formation of exploitative commercial alliances by ntbfs more specifically patent holding affects positively the likelihood to establish commercial alliances but this propensity is found to rapidly decrease with firm size suggesting that as long as ntbfs become larger and possess specialized commercial assets their urge for commercial alliances diminishes second following the parallelism set forth by teece between search for alliance partners and access to external financing the analysis indicates that potentially beneficial alliances may not take place because of the high transaction costs faced by smaller ntbfs in this respect our results clearly support the view that sponsor institutions as public research organizations venture and corporate venture capitalists may sensibly reduce these costs and that their role crucially depends on both the identity of the sponsor and the type of alliance

planes ships and taxes charging for international aviation and maritime emissions international aviation and maritime transport account for a significant and growing share of global carbon emissions yet they are not only excluded from the kyoto agreement and all current carbon pricing schemes but do not even pay fuel excises of the type standard for other transport activities moreover each sector benefits from preferential tax treatment failure to charge vat on international aviation and the application of tonnage tax regimes rather than the normal corporate tax in maritime this paper considers the design of fuel charges in these sectors to address these distortions and quantifies their impact on emissions revenue and welfare showing amongst other things that the gain from offsetting the pre existing tax distortions may be as significant as those from reducing emissions it shows too how compensation schemes can be designed to protect the poorest countries a key ingredient in the politics of the issue given the practical need for wide applicability of such charges the real challenge is to amass the degree of international cooperation required especially strong for maritime failure of which to some degree explains their current under taxation and unsurprisingly to decide who gets the money technically these charges should if anything be rather easy to implement michael keen ian parry and jon strand

cross subsidies and network expansion in developing countries abstract this paper provides a simple model to discuss the financing of network expansion for telecommunications electricity water etc in developing countries it shows how inefficient or corrupt tax systems affect the development of networks and restore partially the relevance of cross subsidies between rich and poor consumers for financing this development

hubs and high fares dominance and market power in the u s airline industry this article estimates the importance of route and airport dominance in determining the degree of market power exercised by an airline the results indicate that an airline s share of passengers on a route and at the endpoint airports significantly influences its ability to mark up price above cost the high markups of a dominant airline however do not create much of an umbrella effect from which carriers with smaller operations in the same markets can benefit the article suggests a number of possible explanations for this asymmetry

network effects congestion externalities and air traffic delays or why not all delays are evil we examine two factors that explain air traffic congestion network benefits due to hubbing and congestion externalities while both factors impact congestion we find that the hubbing effect dominates empirically hub carriers incur most of the additional travel time from hubbing primarily because they cluster their flights in short time spans to provide passengers as many potential connections as possible with a minimum of waiting time non hub flights at the same hub airports operate with minimal additional travel time these results suggest that an optimal congestion tax might have a relatively small impact on flight patterns at hub airports jel l2 l5 l9 d6

another look at airport congestion pricing we study alternate approaches to implement congestion pricing at us airports conventional formulations toll all aircraft without determining whether a plane operated by a given airline delays other planes that it operates or planes operated by other airlines recent work points out optimal pricing calls for carriers to be charged only for the delay they impose on other airlines we find a small difference between the net benefits generated by the two congestion pricing policies because the bulk of airport delays are not internalized and because the efficiency loss from pricing internalized congestion is small jel l11 l93 r41

do carriers internalize congestion costs empirical evidence on the internalization question abstract economists have long suggested overhauling the existing u s airport landing departure fees to reflect market valuations of scarce runway capacity economists however do not agree on the optimal congestion based pricing scheme while some researchers advocate for a uniform congestion fee regardless of a carrier s airport market share others suggest that airport tolls should only reflect the congestion costs imposed on other carriers this paper uses ten years of ontime performance data to empirically determine if carriers internalize congestion costs while previous researchers e g mayer christopher sinai todd 2003a network effects congestion externalities and air traffic delays or why all delays are not evil american economic review 93 4 1194 1215 use excess travel time to measure flight delays the contribution of this paper is the addition of on time arrival and delay measures based on actual versus scheduled arrival and departure times we find that estimates based on these new delay measures reverse earlier findings by mayer and sinai 2003a network effects congestion externalities and air traffic delays or why all delays are not evil american economic review 93 4 1194 1215 and hence imply that carriers are not internalizing flight congestion costs

manipulable congestion tolls the recent literature on congestion pricing with large agents contains a remarkable inconsistency though agents are large enough to recognize self imposed congestion and exert market power over prices they do not take into account the impact of their own actions on the magnitude of congestion tolls when large agents are confronted with tolls derived under this parametric assumption but understand the rule used to generate them the toll system will no longer guide the market to the social optimum to address this problem the present paper derives alternate manipulable toll rules which are designed to achieve the social optimum when agents anticipate the full impact of their actions on toll liabilities

optimal r d investment strategies under the threat of new technology entry abstract this paper studies the r d investment decisions of a firm facing the threat of new technology entry the r d project is subject to technical uncertainty the incumbent can successfully prevent entry by innovating however in an entry deterrence situation the resulting monopoly is different from a monopoly without an entry threat because potential competition means that the monopolist completes the r d project which it otherwise would not have done greater technical uncertainty stimulates initiating exploratory r d and can result in implementation of more expensive research projects this is a result of the limited downside risk of the project it does not matter whether the outcome of an initial r d stage is disappointing or very disappointing since in both cases the firm will simply abandon the project the welfare analysis shows that the threat of entry may reduce welfare in case of entry deterrence

nash equilibrium and welfare optimality if is a set of social alternatives a social choice rule scr assigns a subset of a to each potential profile of individuals preferences over a where the subset is interpreted as the set of welfare optima a game form or mechanism implements the social choice rule if for any potential profile of preferences 1 any welfare optimum can arise as a nash equilibrium of the game form implying in particular that a nash equilibrium exists and 2 all nash equilibria are welfare optimal the main result of this paper establishes that any scr that satisfies two properties monotonicity and no veto power can be implemented by a game form if there are three or more individuals the proof is constructive

the incidence of congestion tolls on urban highways abstract the incidence of an optimal short run congestion toll is investigated using an equilibrium model of modal choice and congestion on a highway corridor served by express bus transit it is argued that for an externality tax the usual equi revenue analysis of burdens is inappropriate instead welfare effects are computed under three alternative assumptions about redistribution of toll revenues in almost all cases the net result is benefits for all income groups it is concluded that congestion tolls should not be rejected on grounds of income distribution but that an explicit package of tolls and revenue uses is probably a political prerequisite for adoption

the environmental impact of highway congestion pricing abstract this article simulates the effects of congestion pricing on emissions of carbon monoxide nitrogen oxide and hydrocarbons for an actual metropolitan highway network traffic is assigned to the network assuming elastic travel demand and endogenous route selection to minimize private or social travel costs simulations price all or part of the network delaware s household travel demand and highway traffic count data calibrate the simulations epa s mobile 5a model predicts that vehicle emissions decrease as much as 10 in aggregate and 30 in highly congested areas benefits from reduced emissions are 15 30 of those from reduced congestion

economics of a bottleneck abstract drawing on vickrey amer econ rev 59 251 261 1969 and subsequent literature this paper provides a thorough economic analysis of the simplest bottleneck model of road congestion with peak load demand in the morning rush hour a fixed number of identical individuals one per car must travel from home to work between which is a bottleneck of given capacity the costs of travel include queuing time and schedule delay time early or late for work the frequency distribution of departure times adjusts so that in equilibrium all individuals have the same travel costs the paper extends the previous literature by examining a coarse toll and solving for optimal capacities the application of congestion tolls can generate efficiency gains by altering the frequency distribution of departure times previous estimates of the efficiency gains from congestion tolling are likely to be substantially downward biased because they have ignored this effect