Although fuel taxes are a practical means of curbing vehicular air pollution, congestion, and accidents in developing countries—all of which are typically major problems—they are often opposed on distributional grounds. Yet few studies have investigated fuel tax incidence in a developing...

This paper reviews the available evidence on the relevance of the Porter hypothesis for automotive emission standards. It focuses on two channels through which the Porter effect may operate. First, there is evidence that emission standards for cars have had important effects on innovation at...

A significant percentage of greenhouse gas emissions results from the need to heat and cool buildings and to provide power to household appliances. The potential for energy savings in this sector is considerable with estimates that energy use could be cut by almost a third simply by implementing...

In September 2011, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency promulgated the first-ever federal regulations mandating fuel economy improvements for heavy-duty commercial vehicles. While the performance-based approach to these rules offers...

El presente documento muestra el programa "Basura Cero" en la ciudad de Bogotá como una medida de regulación del servicio público domiciliario de aseo, a través de la ejecución del principio de gestión integral de los residuos, que desde hace mucho tiempo viene implementándose tanto en...

We estimate a discrete-continuous model of vehicle demand and use for the Belgian region of Flanders, combining the results of the official regional travel survey with a detailed database of vehicle characteristics. The overall predictive value of the submodel predicting the number of vehicles...

This paper investigates second-best congestion pricing in a monocentric city characterized by distortionary, rigid regulatory mechanisms in the housing market (building height restrictions, zoning and property taxation). The Pigouvian toll is shown to retain its optimality under any setting with...

We study the competition of two suburbs that are facing transit traffic flows. We show that in the absence of toll measures, the Nash equilibrium leads to a race to the top in traffic calming, except for the measures that do not affect the generalized cost of traffic. The Nash equilibrium is...

This paper analyzes how countries with international and local truck traffic decide to switch from a simple fuel tax system to a dual system of fuel and kilometer taxes. We show what drives a country to switch and how this affects the level of fuel taxes and the incentives for the other...

Most highways in urban China are tolled to finance their construction. During the eight-day National Day holiday in 2012, highway tolls are waived nationwide for passenger vehicles. We use this to test highway tolls’ effect on air pollution. Using daily pollution and weather data for 98...