The theory of road pricing developed for single links suggests time andlocation varying charges equal to the marginal congestion cost at the efficientlevel of traffic. The second-best network counterpart is derived, but would beinfeasible to implement. Cordon tolls are feasible, and their...

This paper shows that the inefficiency of fiscal decentralization in the presence of spillovers, a main tenet of the decentralization literature, is overturned in a particular transportation context. In a monocentric city where road (bridge) capacity is financed by budget-balancing user fees,...

This paper studies the political economy of cordon tolls, the most common form of road pricing in cities. We consider a monocentric city inhabited by renters and resident-landowners. A cordon toll raises the rental price of land within the cordon, and it reduces rents outside this area. Hence,...

Infrastructure projects are increasingly aiming to improve liveability, in particular in urban areas. We analyse a specific case in which an existing highway in an urban area was moved underground in order to improve intercity traffic flows and to reduce traffic externalities. As travel times...

Using data on federal highway grants from the Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration, this paper investigates several questions regarding the political economy of highway funding. We investigate the period 1994 - 2008 and examine whether political alignment and political...