state characteristics and the location of foreign direct investment within the united states a conditional logit model of the location decision of foreign firms investing in manufacturing facilities in the united states is developed and estimated the authors results for 1981 83 indicate that states with higher per capita incomes and higher densities of manufacturing activity attracted relatively more foreign direct investment in addition higher wages deterred foreign direct investment while higher unemployment rates attracted it surprisingly higher unionization rates were associated with increased foreign direct investment overall higher taxes deterred foreign direct investment however more extensive transportation infrastructures and larger promotional expenditures were associated with increased foreign direct investment copyright 1991 by mit press

information and time of usage decisions in the bottleneck model with stochastic capacity and demand abstract this paper analyzes the effects of information on participation and time of use decisions for a facility subject to queueing congestion when there are predictable and unpredictable fluctuations in capacity and demand with constant elasticity demand and schedule delay cost functions expected social surplus is greater with perfect than with imperfect information but imperfect information can reduce welfare by inducing adverse changes in individuals times of usage this finding has implications for the design of emerging technologies such as advanced traveller information systems that provide information about usage conditions

organisational and spatial determinants of the multi unit firm evidence from the french industry galliano d and soulie n organizational and spatial determinants of the multi unit firm evidence from french industry regional studies this article aims to analyse the factors internal characteristics spatial and industrial environments that determine the existence of multi unit firms and the intensity of their organizational fragmentation at a national scale the empirical models are based on individual data on all french industrial firms collected by the french national institute of statistics the results show the importance of internal characteristics scale economies specific assets as research and development and advertising skill level etc in organizational choice they also highlight the major role played by multi location and by the spatial profile of the firms on the intensity of their fragmentation galliano d and soulie n

foreign and domestic divestment and investment decisions like or unlike the managerial literature on foreign investment and divestment is much less developed than the economic literature on foreign direct investment theory nevertheless surveyed with the purpose of better understanding foreign divestment decisions the research to date reveals some noticeable differences between investment and divestment divisions whether foreign or domestic and even more substantial differences between foreign divestment and domestic divestment decisions additional research however is clearly in order

information policy in road transport with elastic demand some welfare economic considerations abstract this paper analyses the welfare impacts of providing different types of information to a group of potential road users two groups of drivers are considered informed and uninformed ones and three kinds of information are dealt with perfect imperfect and no information the link travel cost functions are assumed to be stochastic and the information concerns these random fluctuations the analysis is limited to a one and two link network and it is further assumed that the actors in the model base their decision making on rational expectations under the assumptions that demand and link travel cost functions are linear and that the population of travellers consists of a homogeneous group except for their respective willingness to pay for making a trip it is found that both the provision of perfect and imperfect information leads to a strict pareto improvement furthermore the analysis reveals that the more perfect the information the more efficient the use of the transport network finally the analysis concerning the two link network two routes running in parallel shows that beneficial route split effects only exist when 1 the number of informed drivers is relatively small and 2 the stochastic shocks in the link travel cost function are relatively large in these cases the benefits to informed drivers are substantially larger than when only mode split effects take place

home sourcing and closer value chains in mature economies the case of spanish manufacturing this paper offers a novel perspective on manufacturing home sourcing we present evidence that home sourcing occurs in the context of a new competitive environment where the relative importance of scale economies versus variety is altered and a recoupling of innovation and production within industrial ecosystems becomes desirable we look at the determinants of manufacturing home sourcing we find that r d intensive businesses with core non standardized products are more likely to switch sourcing of components to the home economy from abroad our findings provide evidence in favour of increasing trends towards closer value chains for knowledge intensive production suggesting that the possibilities for and potential impact of home sourcing have not been fully recognised as pathways to industrial and economic renewal in mature economies the implications for industrial policy are to focus on the resilience of existing national industrial ecosystems and their attractiveness and ability to integrate incoming business opportunities

uniform versus peak load pricing of a bottleneck with elastic demand abstract this paper considers commuting to work across a bottleneck such as a bridge or tunnel with elastic demand with no toll there is wasteful queueing the optimal peak load toll eliminates queueing and leaves total traffic unchanged the second best uniform toll cannot eliminate queueing but reduces total traffic the second best uniform toll may be larger or smaller than the maximum value of the optimal peak load toll

the estimation of models of labour market behaviour in this paper we view the labour market experience of individuals as a process of movement between the states of employment and unemployment we note that there are three main ways of sampling members of the labour force namely sampling the members of a specific state sampling the people entering or leaving a state and sampling the population regardless of state the joint distribution of observable and unobservable characteristics of individuals depends on the mode of sampling adopted we examine this dependence and its implications for the interpretation of estimates of models of labour market behaviour

jockeying for position what it means and why it matters to regional development policy when places compete malecki e j 2004 jockeying for position what it means and why it matters to regional development policy when places compete regional studies38 1093 1112 the realization that places compete for investment has expanded in recent years to encompass competition among places for the attention of migrants tourists and media glow as well as investment the most competitive places have been multidimensional in their attractions and have made the transition to the knowledge based economy the latest priority is being placed on attracting mobile workers and mobile investment creative workers are the core of the knowledge economy and of its geographies such as intelligent places and learning regions knowledge metrics innovation indices and report cards are increasingly common each seemingly developed to sort the list of places in a different order lists or league tables of the best places for business to live retire and visit are key features of economies and societies whose factors of success

patterns of internationalisation of corporate technology location vs home country advantages given the trends towards increasing globalisation of markets and of production the globalisation of technology remains a subject of considerable interest to analysts and policy makers in the 1990s this paper provides some new empirical observations for debate and discussion on the patterns of technological activities of large firms outside their home countries it is based on a systematic analysis of the us patenting activities of 220 of the most internationalised firms in terms of their technology in the 1990s although firms are active outside their home countries in the high technology fields such as computers pharmaceuticals telecommunications image and sound and materials quite a sizeable proportion of their foreign activities are concerned with process and machinery technologies moreover a comparison of the technological advantage of the company at home and the advantage of the location shows that in a large majority of cases firms tend to locate their technology abroad in their core areas where they are strong at home these results suggest that adapting products and processes and materials to suit foreign markets and providing technical support to off shore manufacturing plants remain major factors underlying the internationalisation of technology they are also consistent with the notion that firms are increasingly engaging in small scale activities to monitor and scan new technological developments in centres of excellence in foreign countries within their areas of existing strength however there is little evidence to suggest that even these most internationalised firms routinely go abroad to compensate for their weakness at home

firm specific effects on location decisions of foreign direct investment in china s logistics industry hong j 2007 firm specific effects on location decisions of foreign direct investment in china s logistics industry regional studies 41 673 683 this paper uses conditional logit models to investigate firms specific effects on location decisions of foreign direct investment in china s logistics industry based on a recent census database the empirical results indicate that the importance of some location factors varies with firm characteristics small logistics firms are more sensitive to labour cost than large companies compared with independent firms branch companies are less responsive to local market demand and labour factors wholly owned foreign firms prefer cities with cheap labour while joint ventures put more emphasis on local market demand investors from hong kong macao and taiwan value local market size while those from foreign countries emphasize cheap labour and convenient airway transport location determinants also vary over time and differ across sectors implications for resear

home or overseas an analysis of sourcing strategies under competition motivated by the recent backshoring trend this paper studies a sourcing game where competing firms may choose between efficient sourcing e g sourcing from overseas and responsive sourcing e g sourcing from a home country efficient sourcing usually provides a cost advantage whereas responsive sourcing allows a firm to obtain more accurate demand information when making procurement decisions by characterizing the equilibrium outcome we find some interesting results driven by the strategic interaction between the firms first a firm may still use efficient sourcing in equilibrium even when the cost advantage associated with efficient sourcing does not exist this is because the firm can dampen competition by reducing the correlation between its own demand information and the competitor s second a cost hike in efficient sourcing e g the rising labor cost in asia may benefit all the firms in the industry the reason is that the cost hike may alleviate competition by inducing a new equilibrium sourcing structure this paper also sheds some light on the recent backshoring trend first our analysis indicates that more firms will shift from efficient sourcing to responsive sourcing in equilibrium i e backshore if the market size shrinks the demand becomes more volatile or the sourcing costs rise simultaneously second a firm s backshoring behavior reduces the competition on the cost dimension but it also has an ambiguous informational impact on the other firms in the market in particular some firms may benefit from increased correlation of their demand information under cournot competition with substitutable products overall the backshoring behavior can be beneficial to all the firms sticking to their original sourcing strategies under certain conditions this paper was accepted by martin lariviere operations management

commuting patterns and firm decentralization since most employed individuals must travel between home and work on a daily basis work place commuting has provided the point of departure for the monocentric model of residential location alonso 1964 mills 1972 muth 1969 one of the major behavioral assumptions of the monocentric model is that consumers prefer less commuting to more all else equal hence the model predicts that workers will take advantage of any opportunity to reduce their commutes in the monocentric situation in which all employment is located at the central business district cbd no such opportunity arises however decentralized firm location enables workers to shorten their commutes as firms have left the cbd to move into the residential area the monocentric model thus predicts that if firms have decentralized workers should have very short commutes in longrun equilibrium however significant commuting persists in the face of large scale firm decentralization such commuting leads to the belief that frictions with respect to residential and job mobility exist which prevent workers from achieving the long run equilibrium solution predicted by the monocentric model in this paper i hypothesize that individuals with greater job and residential mobility will have shorter commutes given decentralized firm location residential and job mobility are further hypothesized to be functions of socio economic and employment characteristics the results show sex income race household responsibilities and job mobility to be important in determining commuting behavior the monocentric model is based on a separation of the house and work place theoretically this separation can be measured either in terms of commuting time or distance however most tests of the monocentric model have used commuting distance hamilton 1982 blackley and follain 1987 the time vs distance issue is explicitly addressed in this paper by using both measures in the estimations the results

closing knowledge gaps in foreign markets knowledge and learning are ascribed pivotal roles in firms internationalization processes perceived market uncertainties namely knowledge gaps related to business environments in foreign markets may curb firms inclinations to commit resources to these markets this study explores whether knowledge gaps tend to increase or decrease with time when operating in the foreign market and it discusses which learning components narrow or widen the perceived knowledge gap a theoretical model is developed based on the internationalization process view and the more recent organizational learning perspective including such concepts as overconfidence and absorptive capacity the theoretical model is tested on a set of primary data covering danish and swedish firms and their foreign market operations the results suggest a more subtle relationship between experience and perceived knowledge gaps than the mechanical relationship portrayed by the internationalization process view a relationship in which absorptive capacity and in particular overconfidence play important roles

unemployment insurance and male unemployment duration in canada a model of unemployment duration is estimated with weekly micro data on canadian men entitlement provisions in the unemployment insurance program and demand conditions are found to have a significant effect on the probability of leaving unemployment the probability of a worker leaving unemployment declines with the duration of unemployment holding unemployment insurance entitlement constant when entitlement is allowed to vary the probability of leaving first falls and then generally rises with unemployment duration these results are robust with respect to allowing for person specific unobserved heterogeneity and alternative specifications of duration dependence

the internalisation theory of the multinational enterprise a review of the progress of a research agenda after 30 years this paper reviews the progress of the research agenda initiated by the future of the multinational enterprise 1976 focusing initially on the problem of explaining the existence of the multinational enterprise the agenda soon broadened to encompass the analysis of alternative modes of foreign market entry the role of international joint ventures the impact of innovation on corporate growth and the role of culture in international business the core philosophy based on the coasian nature of the firm and on rational action modelling has remained constant while the widening range of applications has encouraged synthesis with theories developed in other fields of research success in answering any one question invariably generates new questions which must in turn be answered through a further extension of the theory and this dynamic continues to drive the development of the theory today internalisation theory has retained its validity and its vitality over the past 30 years and is currently being extended into new fields of international business research

a bivariate duration model for job mobility of two earner households abstract in recent years we have observed an increasing interest in the job mobility patterns of employed persons a new issue in this context is the mutual dependence of job mobility choice of workers who belong to the same household in the present paper we focus on bivariate duration models of stock sampled data in which dependence is induced through mixing we apply the estimation method on the basis of an empirical study on the mutual dependence of job mobility of workers belonging to a two earner household in the netherlands an interesting empirical result is that the marginal willingness to pay for a reduction in commuting time in a two wage earner household is higher than that usually found for single earner workers

economic geography and the location of tncs financial and professional service fdi to the usa this paper attempts to examine theoretically and empirically the explanatory power of concepts drawn from economic geography for the explanation of the location of tncs it combines concepts from economic geography and international business theories in a model that seeks to explain the location of transnational corporations tncs and tests the model on financial and professional service fdi to the us the findings suggest a need to extend the conventional location model of international business by acknowledging the processes taking place among firms located in geographic proximity

safe nests in global nets internationalization and appropriability of r d in wireless telecom this paper documents the case of the wireless telecom industry to bring new empirical evidence to the debate on the internationalization of research and development r d activities us patent statistics on the four industry leaders ericsson motorola nokia and qualcomm illustrate the growing trend of the internationalization of r d over the 1990s yet we show that the most critical r d projects related to the development of wireless standards remain homebound the paper then leverages qualitative data collected through interviews with informed managers to provide a fresh interpretation for the homeboundedness of critical industrial r d the stickiness of core r d projects to domestic locations is related not only to organizational inertia and the unripe maturation of subsidiaries as suggested by prior literature but particularly to the headquarters centralization of intellectual property ip management which offers a high level of appropriability of r d results the unequal distribution of appropriability across corporate r d networks is at the base of the formation of safe nests domestic r d centers that are sheltered from the forces of globalization because they offer a desirable setting for the exploitation of technologies deriving from a stronger coordination of inventive activities with the management of ip

identification results for duration models with multiple spells the purpose of this paper is to investigate the identifiability of duration models with multiple spells we prove that the results of elbers and ridder 1982 and heckman and singer 1984 can be generalized to multi spell models with lagged duration dependence we also prove that without lagged duration dependence the identification result does not depend on moment conditions or tail conditions on the mixing distribution this result is in contrast to ridder s 1990 result for single spell models

location and the multinational enterprise a neglected factor this article first traces the changing world economic scenario for international business over the past two decades and then goes on to examine its implications for the location of foreign direct investment and multinational enterprise activity it suggests that many of the explanations of the 1970s and early 1980s need to be modified as firm specific assets have become mobile across natural boundaries a final section of the article examines the dynamic interface between the value added activities of multinational enterprises in different locations

a structural dynamic analysis of job turnover and the costs associated with moving to another job this paper provides an empirical analysis of the labor market behavior of employed individuals using a structural on the job search model the costs associated with moving to another job are allowed to be nonzero and may depend on the wage level it is shown that under certain conditions the optimal strategy has the reservation wage property the model is estimated using data on job durations and subjective responses concerning the search strategy the results reveal some strong sources of inflexibility of the labor market copyright 1992 by royal economic society

on the growth of foreign affiliates multinational plant networks joint ventures and flexibility we take a flexibility perspective to analyse employment growth in a large sample of japanese manufacturing affiliates in nine asian countries during the years leading up to and into the asian financial crisis 1995 1999 we find that joint ventures are less flexible than wholly owned affiliates in responding to changing environmental conditions in the focal country and underperform in high growth environments multinational enterprises mnes use the flexibility created by their multinational plant network to adjust affiliate employment in response to labour cost changes in other countries in which they operate plants however no evidence was found that the presence of joint ventures in multinational plant networks reduces this network flexibility our findings suggest that more research is needed on the heterogeneous responses of mnes and their affiliates to changing economic environments

prior to reshoring a duration analysis of foreign manufacturing ventures this paper throws light on the determinants of the duration of manufacturing offshore experiences by us and european firms prior to reshoring by applying survival analysis to a dataset of 249 offshoring experiences terminated with a relocation to the home country region we estimate the effects of different groups of survival determinants results highlight that contextual factors such as the industry the home country the host country and the size of the firm significantly affect the duration of offshoring experiences the likelihood of termination is in fact higher for the electronics and automotive industries for small firms for firms headquartered in europe and for offshoring to asia the analysis of the motivations for reshoring shows that quality issues experienced offshore emerge as the key factor giving rise to shorter offshore stays based on these empirical findings a set of testable propositions is developed in particular we conjecture that the likelihood of termination of offshore manufacturing and the return to the home country may be accelerated by technology based industries small firm sizes shrinking cost differentials and the psychic distance between home and host country the organizational archetypes and quality related motivations

mnes as border crossing multi location enterprises the role of discontinuities in geographic space spurred by the classic work of dunning mne location has become the focus of a growing body of research in the field in this paper we argue that international business ib research examining the spatial dimension has serious weaknesses stemming from its traditional assumption of the country as the location unit of analysis while border crossing remains the key research context of ib placing it within a general spatial framework that recognizes both international and subnational spatial heterogeneity opens up vast new vistas for research analyzing mnes as border crossing multi location enterprises allows the researcher to distinguish between discrete border effects and continuous distance effects and undertake a more fine grained analysis of location within such analysis national borders may appear as qualitative discontinuities in space that is points at which spatial heterogeneity changes abruptly however subnational spatial heterogeneity is often the characteristic that drives firm strategy as mnes decide to locate in particular agglomerations and not at random locations within a country the complex firms that ib scholars study typically include multiple units within the same country so that a complete analysis requires considering both subnational distance effects as well as international border effects

a strategic needs perspective on operations outsourcing and other inter firm relationships abstract this paper considers two issues the formation of inter firm relationships and the choice of governance form these have been widely investigated in both the strategic management and operations management fields this paper contributes to the literature in three ways first we address why firms enter inter firm relationships by hypothesizing that managers enter them to pursue three strategic needs that is efficiency effectiveness knowledge learning and global market access our first contribution evidences the relationship between the above strategic needs and a number of operational objectives that managers normally pursue in an inter firm relationship second we hypothesize how the achievement of the above strategic needs influences the choice of governance form third we compare our framework with the operations management approach to strategic networks by evidencing similarities between the two approaches and showing that managers pursue a similar approach when they face inter firm agreement issues whether agreements are supply chain or strategy oriented we empirically test our framework using secondary data consisting of 95 inter firm agreements our findings largely support the theoretical predictions and also have important practical implications first our results offer managers practice suggestions on what kinds of objectives can be pursued together in inter firm relationships to achieve specific strategic needs and which governance form is most suitable depending on the strategic need in question second we consider the strategic reasoning concerning inter firm relationship management and some engineering issues such as time and quality objectives that while largely considered in the operations management literature are often neglected in the strategic management field

work and health after retirement a competing risks model with semiparametric unobserved heterogeneity competing risks models recognize that there may be more than one exit from a given state but they make the strong assumption that there is no correlation between unobserved heterogeneity components in each state here a competing risks model that uses a semiparametric method of estimation and controls for the correlation between unobserved heterogeneity components in each state is compared with a traditional competing risks model of exit from retirement the unobservable heterogeneity components of the competing risks are insignificantly positively correlated and the effects of policy relevant variables are changed somewhat copyright 1989 by mit press

estimating workers marginal willingness to pay for job attributes using duration data this paper develops and applies a method for estimating workers marginal willingess to pay for job attributes when workers job choices are characterized by imperfect information and labor market search as an application this paper analyzes the job durations of white males using data from the national longitudinal survey youth cohort and the dictionary of occupational titles estimates of workers willingness to pay derived from the job duration model are compared with those derived from an hedonic wage model

effects of economic incentives in the american film industry an ecological approach abstractus states have offered billions of dollars in film industry incentives but despite the popularity of these incentives the effects of these investments are unclear this study adopts an ecological framework and tests the hypothesis that film incentives are effective when they produce changes in the composition of organizational communities the results of longitudinal linear mixed effects models centred around incentive introduction in each state show that above the impact of their dollar value the simple presence of economic incentives organizational diversity and the presence of dominant organizational populations are associated with increases in filming employment and new establishments theoretical and policy implications are discussed

how much does subnational region matter to foreign subsidiary performance evidence from fortune global 500 corporations investment in china what explains the heterogeneity of foreign subsidiary performance previous studies have emphasized the importance of industry corporate parent and home country effects on the variation of foreign subsidiary performance building on recent international business and economic geography research this study examines the extent to which subnational region effects can also explain such performance variation we empirically decompose the variance of the performance of fortune global 500 corporations subsidiaries in china during 1998 2006 results show that not only are subnational region effects statistically significant in explaining the variation of subsidiary performance but their interactions with industry corporate parent and home country effects are also significant and economically important we further show that subnational region effects tend to be stronger in the period prior to china s wto accession and in the country s less developed subnational regions our findings highlight the importance of considering both the direct and indirect roles of subnational region in shaping firms strategy and performance in international business research

government contracts and contractor behavior the u s government embraces the concepts of privatization and market competition but the realm of contracting shows that it has not always been able to put its principles into practice although the contracting system is supposed to be open and competitive in recent years the government has often awarded contracts with little or no competitive bidding has chosen to award mostly cost plus type contracts that force the government to assume more of the risk and lacked efficiency in monitoring and overseeing private contractors while the number and value of contracts have increased the workforce to oversee these contracts has been reduced preventing the government from adequately enforcing compliance with the contractors and the government has not made use of past performance evaluations in its contracting system private contractors that do business with the u s government are for the most part well established firms with ample resources and inside contacts many contracts are still being awarded on preferential treatment and to the larger and well established contractors

closure and divestiture by foreign entrants the impact of entry and post entry strategies we analyze the longevity of foreign entrants explicitly considering two possible ways of exit firm closure and capital divestiture we find that entry and post entry strategies affect the longevity of firms and of foreign equity holdings but in different manners while the ownership arrangements and organizational structure affect the likelihood of divestment they exert no significant effect upon closure the entry mode exerts opposite effects on the two modes of exit greenfield entrants being more likely to shutdown but less likely to be divested only human capital affects closure and divestment in the same manner firms with large endowments of human capital are less likely to exit irrespective of the exit mode considered copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

licensing duration in foreign markets a real options perspective licensing can be considered an initial trial of a foreign market before a firm fully commits to it through other investment modes the length of trial has great importance because licensing duration represents part of the licensing agreement when it is too short the firm may not acquire the necessary experience and knowledge of the foreign market but if it is too long the firm misses optimal expansion timing arguing that licensing can be considered as a european style real option with a fixed holding period we develop and test a model of the determinants of licensing duration in foreign markets empirical results based on a sample of firms in various countries show that uncertainty and threat of competitive pre emption in the foreign market are related to shorter duration of the technology licensing agreements we also find that irreversibility of the impending investment moderates the relationships between uncertainty and duration specifically market and technology uncertainties in the foreign market induce shorter contracts under low levels of irreversibility

the survival of new plants start up conditions and post entry evolution abstract this paper examines the longevity of entrants we find size to be an important determinant of the chances of survival this being particularly relevant to de novo entrants as compared with entry by established firms current size is also found to be a better predictor of failure than initial size moreover our findings indicate that after controlling for size differences past growth matters for survival suggesting a partial adjustment process for firm size in the post entry period finally new plants are more likely to live longer if they enter growing industries or industries with little entry activity

location and the multinational enterprise in the early development of the international business field the focus of attention moved from the country level to the firm level and interest in location issues declined more recently firm based research has itself become increasingly concerned with the study of firm location interactions when examining two way knowledge flows or spillovers between multinational enterprises mnes and other actors in specific locations the diversity or heterogeneity of firms matters as does the diversity of locational environments the localization of knowledge sources depends on mne group level strategies for growth and organizational decentralization on subsidiary level evolution towards local competence creating efforts and on the development of suitable business networks within locations mnes now have a greater potential to benefit from a synergistic locational portfolio of complementary sources of knowledge the locational composition of the international network for knowledge sourcing of a given mne depends upon the extent of institutional compatibility between the locations in which the mne is active this compatibility between locations in turn affects the capacity of the mne to become an insider in local business systems and to influence the local institutional environment

attrition in longitudinal panel data and the empirical analysis of dynamic labour market behaviour in the empirical analysis of unemployment durations and job durations it is generally assumed that the stochastic processes underlying labour market behaviour and the behaviour concerning participation in a panel survey are independent however there are reasons to believe that the probability of dropping out of the panel is related to the rate at which a different job is found if there is such a relation and if it is ignored then the estimator of the rate at which individuals become employed or change jobs will generally be inconsistent in this paper we analyse the relation between the duration spent in a particular labour market state and the duration of panel survey participation by explicitly modelling and estimating the joint distribution of both durations the emphasis will be on models allowing for stochastically related unobserved determinants of both types of duration we estimate models both for unemployment durations and for job durations copyright 1994 john wiley sons ltd

coming home and not moving in examining reshoring firms subnational location choices in the united states the relation between firm characteristics i e size and domestic location choice i e home state versus other of reshoring firms contingent on place i e labour cost innovation intensity

information and usage of congestible facilities under different pricing regimes uncertainty about usage conditions is common in many congestible facilities in this paper the authors consider the effects of providing information to prospective users under three regimes free access nonresponsive congestion tolling and responsive tolling based on current information with either free access or nonresponsive tolling better information can induce changes in usage that reduce expected social surplus but responsive tolling assures that better information is welfare improving the joint welfare gains from providing information and tolling can be larger or smaller than the sum of the gains from implementing each independently superadditivity is likely to obtain when demand is price elastic

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