This paper studies urban sustainability from the perspective ofexternalities. We develop a general spatialequilibrium model of a monocentric city, in which two types ofexternalities occur. On the one hand, pollution inthe industrial centre leads to a spatially differentiateddeterioration of the...

This paper discusses a number of issues centred around the evaluation of the benefits and costs of transport. It is argued that, for various reasons, transport cannot be treated as an ‘ordinary’ economic sector, and in the paper the policy implications of a number of the sector’s...

This discussion paper has resulted in an article in 'Economica', 2002, 69(273), 21-40.

Frequency of services and vehicle size are important policyinstruments of railway companies. Extending Mohring's basic'square root model' for frequencies, we arrive at more generalformulations for frequency, vehicle size and price underalternative regimes of welfare and profit optimisation. It...

This paper is concerned with the economics of urban externalities. We start by reviewing the literature on urban externalities, and observe that although many interesting contributions have been made, there seems to be sufficient scope and need for further research, both theoretically and...

Impact evaluations of development programmes usually focus on a comparison of participants with a control group. However, if the programme generates externalities for non-participants such an approach will capture only part of the programme’s impact. Based on a unique large-scale quantitative...

In this paper it is argued that subjective well-being of the individual depends on two types of variables. The first type consists of characteristics of the individual himself, such as age, health, income, etc. The second type of variables consists of the characteristics of the individuals...

There is by now a large literature arguing that auctions with a variety of after-market interactions may not yield an efficient allocation of the objects for sale, especially when the bidders impose strong negative externalities upon each other. This paper argues that these inefficiencies can be...

Industrial sites cause several negative externalities, such as traffic noise disturbance, congestion, and obstruction of view. In order to quantify the negative effects stemming from industrial sites, we estimate – using a hedonic pricing model – the impact of distance to industrial sites on...

This article presents a model of sequential decisions about investments in environmentally dirty and clean technologies, which extends the path-dependence framework of Arthur (1989). This allows us to evaluate if and how an economy locked into a dirty technology can be unlocked and move towards...