We examine how diversification of projects assigned to an agency can enhance efficiency by informing a principal of the agency’s quality. Projects that appear inefficient in isolation may be justified when assigned to the same agency. Assigning different tasks to different special purpose...

Central governments often subsidize capital spending by local governments, instead of subsidizing operating expenses or labor-intensive projects. This paper offers one explanation, focusing on the incentive effects for local officials. a local official can more easily shift the cost of...

In this paper we study how trip chaining affects the pricing and equilibrium number of firms. We use a monopolistic competition model where firms offer differentiated products as well as differentiated jobs to households who are all located at some distance from the firms. Trip chaining means...

This paper offers a stylized model in which an agency is in charge of investing in road capacity and maintain it but cannot use the capital market so that the only sources of funds are the toll revenues. We call this the strict self-financing constraint in opposition to the traditional self...

A partial equilibrium model for the urban transport market is described. The urban transport market is represented as a set of interrelated transport submarkets, one per type of mode or vehicle and period. This allows to represent in detail the different external costs associated with the use of...

We study duopolistic pricing by ports that are congestible and that share a downstream, congestible transport network with other users in their respective hinterlands. In the central set-up, local (country) governments care about local welfare only and decide on the capacity of the port and of...

In the course of 2006, Gazprom sharply increased gas prices for Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia and Moldova. This paper assesses (i) to what extent Europe is vulnerable to similar use of market power by Russia, and (ii) to what extent the construction of strategic gas storage could help Europe to...

The partial equilibrium model PRIMES-transport has been used for the evaluation of different transport policy measures which are on the table at EU or national level. The model covers the transport activity by transport mode and their associated energy consumption and air pollution in the EU,...

Consider a shopper or tourist driving downtown and trying to park. Two strategies are usually available: either park at a private off-street facility or search for a cheaper on-street spot. We formalise such a setting and use the model to study optimal government regulation of the on-street...

On-street urban parking spaces are typically regulated by either a meter fee or a time restriction. This paper shows that, when the off-street parking market is perfectly competitive, meter fees are more efficient than time restrictions. When on-street parking is free, albeit subject to a time...