The great difference between our journeys and activity schedules and those of our forebears lies in the much longer distances we travel. By road, and even more so by rail and air, nowadays we can cover hundreds or even thousands of miles in a few hours. Inter-urban mobility is directly affected...

The paper analyzes the welfare properties of voluntary agreements (VA) with polluters, when they are obtained under the legislative threat of an alternative stricter policy option. In the model, the threat is an abatement quota. Both the threat and its probability of implementation are...

In actual environmental policy, the design of actual pollution emission taxes differs significantly with the optimal Pigovian tax. In particular, earmarking prevails and actual taxes are usually combined with regulation. Furthermore tax rates are generally too low to significantly influence...

The purpose of this paper is to set out the reasons for this success and, in particular, the propitious environment in which it was achieved: an environment which certainly does not prevail today. Having had the political courage to launch the first high-speed line in Europe, France will no...

This paper examines the optimal level of public transport pricing in metropolitan areas, using Stockholm and Paris as case studies. It shows that overall welfare improves if public transport prices are increased during peak hours to balance demand and fund additional services in the peak. This...

This paper assesses the impact of European rail transport regulation in the past 25 years. It highlights competition as a necessary condition to overcome the inertia of legacy railway operators, but argues that competition is not sufficient to increase efficiency when they feel protected by the...