We study the efficiency of private supply of roads under demand uncertainty and evaluate various regulatory policies. Due to demand uncertainty, capacity is decided before demand is known but tolls can be adjusted after demand is known. Policy implications can differ from those under deterministic de- * Corresponding author. email-addresses: x.fu@vu.nl(X. Fu), v.a.c.vanden.berg@vu.nl (V.A.C. van den Berg), e.t.verhoef@vu.nl (E.T. Verhoef) 1 mand. For instance, for serial links, the toll in the second-best zero-profit case is no longer equal to the marginal external congestion cost. In the firstbest scenario, the capacity under uncertain demand is higher than that under deterministic demand of the same expected value, though self-financing still holds in expected terms. Regulation by perfect competitive auction cannot replicate the second-best zero-profit result and thus leads to a lower welfare, whereas without uncertainty various forms of competitive auctions can attain this second-best optimum. For more complex networks, when private firms add capacity in turn, contrary to the case without demand uncertainty, some form of auction performs better than others with demand uncertainty.
We study different mixes of private and public supply of roads in a network with bottleneck congestion and heterogeneous users. There are two parallel links for one origin and destination pair and two groups of travellers, where the group with higher value of time also has higher schedule delay value. Previous scholars argued that as users become more heterogeneous, they benefit more from product differentiation, making private supply of roads more efficient. However, we find that local monopoly power might also increase. This may occur if one group prefers one road over the other as the 1 two offer different combinations of toll and travel delay. The private supplier can thus increase the toll on its link without worrying that the targeted travellers will move to the other link. This can undermine the efficiency of private supply of roads. The problem is especially severe with flat tolls. With queue-eliminating tolls, both types tend to travel on both roads, and competition remains relatively intense. Flat tolling is always worse for users than time-variant tolling as it has the higher generalized prices, and it also leads to a lower welfare.
We study different mixes of private and public supply of roads in a network with bottleneck congestion and heterogeneous users. There are two parallel links for one origin and destination pair and two groups of travellers, where the group with the higher value of time also has higher schedule delay values. Previous scholars argued that as users become more heterogeneous, they benefit more from product differentiation, making private supply of roads more efficient. However, we find that local monopoly power might also increase if there is a 'separating equilibrium', which is an equilibrium where at least one group only uses one private road due to the different combinations of toll and congestion of the two roads. The private road can thus increase its toll without worrying about the competition from the other road for this group: it has a local monopoly over them. This lowers the efficiency of private supply. The problem is especially severe with flat tolls, which are constant over the peak. With fine tolls-which vary continuously over the day-there tends to be a pooling equilibrium-where both types use both roads-and competition remains intense. Flat tolling is also worse for users than fine tolling, as it has higher generalized prices.
We study the efficiency of private supply of roads under demand uncertainty and evaluate various regulatory policies. Due to demand uncertainty, capacity is decided before demand is known but tolls can be adjusted after demand is known. Policy implications can differ from those under deterministic de- * Corresponding author. email-addresses: x.fu@vu.nl(X. Fu), v.a.c.vanden.berg@vu.nl (V.A.C. van den Berg), e.t.verhoef@vu.nl (E.T. Verhoef) 1 mand. For instance, for serial links, the toll in the second-best zero-profit case is no longer equal to the marginal external congestion cost. In the firstbest scenario, the capacity under uncertain demand is higher than that under deterministic demand of the same expected value, though self-financing still holds in expected terms. Regulation by perfect competitive auction cannot replicate the second-best zero-profit result and thus leads to a lower welfare, whereas without uncertainty various forms of competitive auctions can attain this second-best optimum. For more complex networks, when private firms add capacity in turn, contrary to the case without demand uncertainty, some form of auction performs better than others with demand uncertainty.
Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractThere has been wide interest in private supply of roads as a solution to traffic congestion. We study its efficiency under demand uncertainty: we solve for equilibrium and optimum as benchmarks, and evaluate the efficiency of possible regulatory policies for private road operators. We obtain analytic solutions for simple networks and numerical simulation results for more complex ones. For two serial links and two parallel links, self-financing still holds in expected terms for the first-best case, even though the capacity is higher than the capacity for the deterministic demand equal to the expected value. When forced to apply the second-best optimal pricing, the private supplier makes an expected loss (profit) if there is an untolled substitute (complement) in the network. In contrast to the deterministic counterpart of the problem we study, regulation by competitive auction cannot replicate the second-best * Corresponding author. TEL:+31205988978. email-addresses: x.fu@vu.nl(X. Fu), v.a.c.vanden.berg@vu.nl (V. van den Berg), e.t.verhoef@vu.nl (E.T. Verhoef) 1 zero-profit result. For more complex networks, when private firms adds capacity one link at a time, entry by competitive auctions performs better than free entry. For the parameter range considered in the numerical simulation, entry by generalized auction performs better than entry by patronage auction.
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