In most dynamic traffic congestion models, congestion tolls must vary continuously over time to achieve the full optimum. This is also the case in Vickrey's (1969) 'bottleneck model'. To date, the closest approximations of this ideal in practice have so-called 'step tolls', in which the toll...

Traffic congestion is one of the most challenging issues of urban agglomeration. Congestion costs are often higher than their socially optimal levels, and little is known about the key parameters needed to design optimal congestion policies. This paper addresses this issue by exploiting an...

This paper studies road safety and accident externalities when insurance companies have market power, and can influence road users' driving behaviour via insurance premiums. We obtain both welfare and profit maximizing marginal conditions for first- and second-best insurance premiums for...

In most dynamic traffic congestion models, congestion tolls must vary continuously over time to achieve the full optimum. This is also the case in Vickrey's (1969) 'bottleneck model'. To date, the closest approximations of this ideal in practice have so-called 'step tolls,' in which the toll...

This paper discusses the main external costs related to road transport and the design of taxes to manage them. It provides an overview of evolving tax practice in the European Union and the United States and identifies opportunities for better alignment of transport taxes with external costs....

We estimate the marginal external congestion cost of motor-vehicle travel for Rome, Italy, using a methodology that accounts for hypercongestion (a situation where congestion decreases a road's throughput). We show that the external cost - even when roads are not hypercongested - is substantial,...

The provision of public transit is thought to reduce travel time losses that are due to car congestion. For this reason, it is economically justified to subsidise public transit from a welfare perspective as it creates a congestion-relief benefit. The main goal of this paper is to quantify the...

One of the main unanswered questions in the field of urban economics is to which extent subsidies to public transit are justified. We examine one of the main benefits of public transit, a reduction in car congestion externalities, the so-called congestion relief benefit, using quasi-natural...

Pigovian transport pricing was implemented in a large-scale field experiment in urban areas of Switzerland. The pricing varied across time, space and mode of transport. One third of the participants were given a financial incentive to reduce their external costs of transport, whereas others were...