The authors investigate the association between per capita income and the magnitude and quality of road infrastructure. They adopt an empirical approach, directly comparing or correlating a countries income with selected variables associated with existing road networks. Cross-section analysis of...

Actual, and potential competition is a powerful source of discipline on the pricing behavior of firms with market power. The authors develop a simple model that shows that the effects of new entry, and import competition on industry price-cost markups, depend on country size. The authors...

The authors extend their earlier empirical work by exploring alternative specifications for the relationship between vehicle ownership, road length, and the ratio of vehicles to road length, on the one hand, and income, population, pollution density, and other variables on the other. For the...

In November 1989, Mexico City's administration imposed a regulation banning each car from driving on a specific day of the week. The regulation has been both popular and controversial. Some feel that it is a reasonable concession aimed at alleviating congestion and pollution problems. Others...

The optimal charge for road use is equal to variable costs for road maintenance, together with the costs road users impose on other road users and on the rest of society. One persistent question raised about such charges is what impact they have on cost recovery. The theoretical literature...

The authors survey past trends in vehicle ownership and road network expansion to analyze determinants of their growth at the national and urban level. Surprisingly, they find that: Nationally, income is a major determinant of both vehicle ownership and road length. Nationally, paved road length...

The degree of mobility in incomes is often seen as an important measure of the equality of opportunity in a society and of the flexibility and freedom of its labor market. But estimation of mobility using panel data is biased by the presence of measurement error and non-random attrition from the...

The authors make the case for the return of regulation in the organization of urban bus services in developing countries. During the past three decades urban public transport policy has gone through several phases. The 1980s and 1990s were characterized by liberalization of the sector from...

The author examines how rural road investment projects should be selected and appraised when the objective is poverty reduction. After critically reviewing past and current practices, the author develops an operational approach grounded in a public economics framework in which concerns of equity...