Sponsor
This research is financed by the ERC - European Research Council, Advanced Grant.
Start and end date
The project runs from 01-05-2010 to 01-05-2015.
Short introduction
The motivation for the OPTION project stems from the observation that current transport policy analyses typically ignore the strategic behaviour of ‘large actors’. To an increasing extent, however, it is realized that transport systems and markets are often more complex than perceived, due to multiple private and (semi-)public stakeholders with a more-than-marginal impact on the functioning of transport markets. Such ‘large actors’ typically pursue objectives that do not (fully) run parallel to the overall public interest. In such instances, central transport policies will not have the impact that is anticipated, because these large actors change their behaviour in response to central policies, thus affecting the market outcomes. This can dramatically affect the optimal design and impacts of central policies. The project develops models incorporating large actors for a number of specific cases, e.g. integrated airport-airline networks, rail-road competition, private road supply, insurance companies and traffic accidents, automated highways and electric vehicles, and taxi markets. These transport policy problems are not only of great academic interest, but also present some of the greatest challenges faced by transport policy makers in their daily operations. A specific methodological challenge is the analytical and numerical derivation of ‘second-best’ policy rules.
Final OPTION Conference - Industrial Organization in Transport Network Markets, 9 and 10 April 2015, Tinbergen Institute
The end of the ERC-OPTION project was marked by a final 2-day conference, organized on 9 and 10 April, 2015 at the Tinbergen Institute in Amsterdam. A full and intensive program with 36 presentations related to the theme of the OPTION project, Industrial Organization in Transport Network Markets was put together. All OPTION researchers from the department of Spatial Economics presented their work carried out within the framework of the project. Another 23 world leading experts in the field presented their research along the lines of the theme of the project.
Principal Investigator
Erik Verhoef
Senior researchers
Jos van Ommeren
Jan Rouwendal
Achim Czerny
Eric Pels
Postdoc researchers
Christiaan Behrens
Paul Koster
Vincent van den Berg
PhD students
Martin Adler
Maria Dementieva
Or Levkovich
Hugo Silva
Ioannis Tikoudis
Harry van der Weijde
Publications
JOURNAL ARTICLES
- Berg, V.A.C. van den (2012). Step tolling with price sensitive demand: Why more steps in the toll makes the consumer better off. Transportation Research Part A, 46(10), 1608–1622.
- Berg, V.A.C. van den (2013). Serial private infrastructures.Transportation Research. Part B: Methodological, 56, 186-202.
- Berg, V.A.C. van den (2014). Coarse tolling under heterogeneous preference.Transportation Research. Part B: Methodological, 64 (June), 1-23. doi: 10.1016/j.trb.2014.03.001
- Berg, V.A.C. van den & Verhoef, E.T. (2011). Winning or losing from dynamic bottleneck congestion pricing? The distributional effects of road pricing with heterogeneity in values of time and schedule delay.Journal of Public Economics, 95(7-8), 983-992.
- Berg, V.A.C. van den & Verhoef, E.T. (2012). Is the travel time of private roads too short, too long, or just right?Transportation Research Part B, 46(8), 971-983.
- Berg, V.A.C. van den & Verhoef, E.T. (2014). Congestion pricing in a road and rail network with heterogeneous values of time and schedule delay.Transportmetrica A: Transport Science, 10(5), 377-400.
- Berg, V.A.C. van den & Verhoef, E.T. (2016). Autonomous cars and dynamic bottleneck congestion: The effects on capacity, value of time and preference heterogeneity.Transportation Research. Part B: Methodological, 94 (December), 43-60. doi: 10.1016/j.trb.2016.08.018
- Bleker, S.C., Behrens, C.L., Koster, P.R. & Verhoef, E.T. (2014). Market Structure and the Pricing of New Products: A Nested Logit Approach with Asymmetric Firms. (Working Paper, TI Discussion Paper, no 14-142/VIII). Amsterdam: Tinbergen Institute.
- Czerny, A. & Zhang, A. (2015). Third-degree price discrimination in the presence of congestion externality.Canadian Journal of Economics 48 (4), 1430–1455.
- Dekker, T., Koster, P.R. & Brouwer, R. (2014). Changing with the Tide: Semiparametric Estimation of Preference Dynamics.Land Economics, 90 (4), 717-745. doi: 10.3368/le.90.4.717
- Dementieva, M. & Verhoef, E.T. (2015). Miles, Speed and Technology: Traffic Safety under Oligopolistic Insurance. (Working Paper, TI Discussion Paper, no 15-25/VIII). Amsterdam: Tinbergen Institute.
- Dementieva, M. & Verhoef, E.T. (2016). Miles, speed, and technology: Traffic safety under oligopolistic insurance.Transportation Research. Part B: Methodological, 86 (April), 147-162. doi: 10.1016/j.trb.2016.01.018
- Dementyeva, M., Koster, P.R. & Verhoef, E.T. (2015). Regulation of road accident externalities when insurance companies have market power.Journal of Urban Economics, 86 (March), 1-8. doi: 10.1016/j.jue.2014.11.001
- Gubins, S. & Verhoef, E.T. (2014). Dynamic bottleneck congestion and residential land use in the monocentric city.Journal of Urban Economics, 80(March), 51-61.
- Gubins, S., Verhoef, E.T. & de Graaff, Th. (2012). Welfare Effects of Road Pricing and Traffic Information under Alternative Ownership Regimes. Transportation Research A: Policy and Practice, 46 (8), 1304–1317.
- Koster, P.R. & Koster, R.A. (2015). Commuters’ preferences for fast and reliable travel: A semi-parametric estimation approach, Transportation Research B: Methodological, 81, 289–301.
- Koster, P.R. & Verhoef, E.T. (2012). A Rank-dependent Scheduling Model.Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, 46(1), 123-138.
- Koster, P.R., Pels, E., & Verhoef, E.T. (2016). The User Costs of Air Travel Delay Variability,Transportation Science, 50(1), 20-131.
- Koster, P.R., Verhoef, E.T., Shepherd, S. & Watling, D. (2014). Probabilistic Choice and Congestion Pricing with Heterogeneous Travellers and Price-Sensitive Demand. (Working Paper, TI Discussion Paper, no 14-078/VIII). Amsterdam: Tinbergen Institute.
- Levkovich, O., Rouwendal, J. & Brugman, L. (forthcoming). “Spatial Planning and Segmentation of the Land Market: The case of the Netherlands”. Land Economics.
- Lindsey, C.R., Berg, V.A.C. van den & Verhoef, E.T. (2012). Step tolling with bottleneck queuing congestion.Journal of Urban Economics, 72(1), 46-59.
- Peer, S. & Verhoef, E.T. (2013). Equilibrium at a bottleneck when long-run and short-run scheduling preferences diverge.Transportation Research. Part B: Methodological, 57, 12-27. doi: 10.1016/j.trb.2013.09.001
- Peer, S., Knockaert, J.S.A., Koster, P.R. & Verhoef, E.T. (2014). Over-reporting vs. overreacting: Commuters’ perceptions of travel times.Transportation Research. Part A: Policy & Practice, 69 (November), 476-494. doi: 10.1016/j.tra.2014.07.005
- Peer, S., Knockaert, J., Koster, P.R., Tseng, Y. & Verhoef, E.T. (2013). Door-to-door travel times in RP departure time choice models: An approximation method using GPS data. Transportation Research. Part B: Methodological, 58, 134-150.
- Peer, S., Verhoef, E.T., Knockaert, J.S.A., Koster, P.R. & Tseng, Y. (2015). Long-Run versus Short-Run Perspectives on Consumer scheduling: Evidence from a Revealed-Preference Experiment among Peak-Hour Road Commuters.International Economic Review, 56 (1), 303-323. doi: 10.1111/iere.12103
- Rouwendal, J., Verhoef, E.T. & Knockaert, J. (2012). Give or take? Rewards versus charges for a congested bottleneck.Regional Science and Urban Economics, 42(1-2), 166-176.
- Silva Montalva, H.E. & Verhoef, E.T. (2013). Optimal pricing of flights and passengers at congested airports and the efficiency of atomistic charges.Journal of Public Economics, 106, 1-13. 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2013.06.007
- Silva Montalva, H.E., Verhoef, E.T. & Berg, V.A.C. van den (2014). Airline route structure competition and network policy.Transportation Research. Part B: Methodological, 67(September), 320-343. 10.1016/j.trb.2014.05.012
- Silva Montalva, H.E., Verhoef, E.T. & Berg, V.A.C. van den (2014). Airlines' strategic interactions and airport pricing in a dynamic bottleneck model of congestion.Journal of Urban Economics, 80, 13-27. 10.1016/j.jue.2013.08.002
- Tikoudis, I., Verhoef, E.T. & Ommeren, J.N. van (2015). Second-best Urban Tolls in a Monocentric City with Housing Market Regulations. (Working Paper, TI Discussion Paper, no 15-06/VIII). Amsterdam: Tinbergen Institute.
- Verhoef, E.T. & Silva Montalva, H.E. (2015). Dynamic Equilibrium at a Congestible Facility under Market Power. (Working Paper, TI Discussion Paper, no 15-045/VIII). Amsterdam: Tinbergen Institute.
- Weijde, A.H. van der, Verhoef, E.T. & Berg, V.A.C. van den (2013). Competition in multi-modal transport networks: A dynamic approach.Transportation Research. Part B: Methodological, 53, 31-44. 10.1016/j.trb.2013.03.003
- Weijde, A.H. van der, Verhoef, E.T. & Berg, V.A.C. van den (2014). Hotelling Models with Price-Sensitive Demand and Asymmetric Transport Costs: An Application to Public Transport Scheduling.Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, 48(2), 261-277.
DISSERTATIONS
- H.E. Silva Montalva: "Airport Pricing Policies: Airline Conduct, Price Discrimination, Dynamic Congestion and Network Effects" (8 April, 2015). (Co-)promotors: E.T. Verhoef and V.A.C. van den Berg. Available at: http://dare.ubvu.vu.nl/handle/1871/52565
- I. Tikoudis: "Urban second-best road pricing: spatial general equilibrium perspectives" (9 January, 2017). (Co-)promotors: E.T. Verhoef and J.M. van Ommeren. Available at: http://dare.ubvu.vu.nl/handle/1871/54965
- A.H. van der Weijde: "The Industrial Organization of Transport Markets: Modeling Pricing, Investment and Regulation in Rail and Road Networks" (8 April, 2015). (Co-)promotors: E.T. Verhoef and V.A.C. van den Berg. Available at: http://dare.ubvu.vu.nl/handle/1871/52564