In their official capacity as regulators, service providers, and investors, public officials have generally instituted policies that have led to inefficient and inequitable urban transportation. The only realistic way to improve the system is to privatize it

This paper assesses governmental performance in its investment, provision, and regulation of urban transportation. Attention is given to public bus and rail transit and road transportation. Evidence based on urban transport in U.S. cities reveals substantial allocative and technical...

Policymakers attempt to reduce the growth of congestion by spending billions of dollars annually on our road system. We evaluate this policy by estimating the determinants of congestion costs for motorists, trucking operations, and shipping firms. We find that, on average, one dollar of highway...

The offset hypothesis predicts consumers adapt to innovations that improve safety by becoming less vigilant about safety. Previous tests have used aggregate data that may confound the effect of a safety policy with those consumers who are most affected by it. We test the hypothesis using...

We apply recent econometric advances to study the distribution of commuters' preferences for speedy and reliable highway travel. Our analysis applies mixed logit to combined revealed and stated preference data on commuter choices of whether to pay a toll for congestion free express travel. We...

This article seeks to explain the recent growth in the adoption of air bags in new automobiles. Our analysis focuses on market forces, that is, consumers' willingness to pay for air bags and automakers' responsiveness to consumers' willingness to pay. We find that air bags were offered by...