Transport Economics Research Articles

Turkey in the geopolitics of energy

Summary This article discusses how geography, energy markets and political developments determine Turkey's role in the geopolitics of energy. Located strategically between two continents, Turkey has a desire of becoming an international physical hub and transit corridor for natural gas, while at the same time improving its own energy security. Domestic Turkish demand and market regulations, existing and new sources of supply, as well as internal and external economic, regulatory and political factors interplay in the realization of these goals. The article argues that the potential Turkey has to become a significant player in natural gas transit depends on the simultaneous developments of the domestic political situation and the great political uncertainties in its neighborhood. If market developments allow, Turkey may become a hub for Russian gas through the Western part of the country, and it may become a hub for gas from Central Asia and the Middle East while also serving its Middle and Eastern parts. The outcome depends on domestic decisions colored by the economics of natural gas transportation and political developments in its surroundings.

The accuracy of toll road traffic forecasts: An econometric evaluation

This study assesses the accuracy of toll road traffic forecasts in Norway. This study contributes to extant literature regarding transportation economics and policy because few studies have analyzed the accuracy of toll road traffic forecasts and current studies on this topic do not use a succinct econometric framework to infer the forecast’s bias and efficiency, which are determinants of the accuracy of forecasts. The data for this study include 68 toll road projects where forecasts and actual out-turns were available. All projects that are included in this study were opened for traffic during 1975–2014. Transport models were made mandatory for forecasting toll traffic in 2006. The results of this study reveal the following: (i) Norwegian toll road traffic forecasts are underestimated but are close to accurate because the mean percentage error is a mere 4%. This result sharply contrasts international studies that resulted in large overestimations at more than −20%. (ii) The accuracy of forecasts has not improved since transport models became mandatory. (iii) The Norwegian toll road traffic forecasts are unbiased, which implies that they do not tend to be one-sided. (iv) Norwegian forecasts are efficient, which implies that available information is used adequately when making forecasts. Our conclusion is that the toll traffic forecasts in Norway perform fairly well compared to the forecasts of other countries. In addition, we recommend that the assessment of forecasts in the transportation sector should be based on succinct econometric frameworks; otherwise, the conclusions may lack important information regarding the bias and efficiency of the forecasts.

Time-declining risk-adjusted social discount rates for transport infrastructure planning

This paper proposes a social discount rate for transport infrastructure project evaluation in Germany that accounts for production efficiency, systematic traffic demand risk, as well as increasing uncertainty in the long-run. The systematic risk in infrastructure planning is measured by the sensitivity of transport volume towards GDP using cointegration analysis. In contrast to the only existing application of this model in transport economics, in this paper the systematic risk for freight transport projects is substantially higher than for passenger transport projects. Due to different systematic risk patterns, the discount rates for freight and passenger transport projects should differ as well, with the former being equal to approximately 3.5% and declining to 2.7% after 50 years, and the latter ranging between 2.0% and the risk-free rate of 1.3%. This paper focuses especially on the econometric challenges of the CAPM-like estimation of systematic risk in public transport infrastructure project assessment and is at the same time the first application to German data.

Downtown parking supply, work-trip mode choice and urban spatial structure

This paper examines the effects of changes in downtown parking supply on urban welfare, modal choice decisions and urban spatial structure using a spatial general equilibrium model of a closed monocentric city with two transport modes, endogenous residential parking and a form of bottleneck congestion at the CBD. Our analysis shows that parking reforms at the CBD that increase delay congestion costs in the short-run such as parking supply limits can be welfare improving if other commuting externalities such as air pollution can be reduced. In addition, because parking limits can also change location decisions such as where to live and invest they may complement anti-sprawl policies efforts by leading to a more compact urban spatial structure in the long run. We also show that changes in downtown parking supply can have different spatial impacts on the market supply of residential parking by affecting urban residents’ location decisions. Finally, we investigate whether the self-financing theorem of transportation economics holds within the context of our spatial urban model.

Artificial islands as a manifestation of glocalisation

The article is devoted to economic reasons for creation of artificial lands, including artificial islands, and problems related to their functioning. The scientific achievements of economic geography constitute a theoretical basis of the analysis. Economic reasons for constructing artificial islands in particular may, to a large extent, be explained by reference to a new economic geography of Paul Krugman. Therefore, the Authors associate the dynamically developing phenomenon of building artificial islands with the process of glocalisation. On the other hand, functioning of artificial islands – in their opinion – may basically be reduced to a concept of the balance of a company, as an artificial island may be treated as its counterpart.

АНАЛИТИЧЕСКАЯ ОЦЕНКА КЛЮЧЕВЫХ ПОКАЗАТЕЛЕЙ ТРАНСПОРТИРОВКИ ДЛЯ МУЛЬТИМОДАЛЬНЫХ ПЕРЕВОЗОК

Economic growth and prosperity of the country mainly depend on development of the transport system. Herewith there are some problems at the basic level (in transport companies), such as planning and performance assessment, which makes it difficult for managers to objectively evaluate logistics problems and as a consequence, to take right decisions. Thus, solving those problems will contribute to the management process of transport companies. That is why, the issue of assessment of transport key performance indicators (KPI) is of a current interest. In the article there is given a short literature overview of the economic analysis methods in transport economics, the integral method in particular. There are displayed some examples how to apply the integral method of analysis for traffic management assessment, and pointed out the main perspectives for further development of the method. There is concerned correlation between transport operations and theefficiency and profitability of the companies, as well as other general economic indicators. The author suggested a three-level model for integral analysis of KPI. The first level of the model includes calculation of general economic indicators of the company efficiency, the Du Pont model being taken for analysis. The second level deals with total costs for a conveyance. The basic level presents indicators of transportation work performance. Thus, it becomes possible to analyze the effect caused by random factors on general performance indicators, using the system of equations for a consistent, step-by-stepanalysis.The authors offered an approbation of the suggested method in relation to a multimodal conveyance, which occurred effective in getting precise calculations and accurate assessment of conveyance.

Gravity, Distance, and International Trade

We review and interpret the main theoretical developments in the gravity literature from its very early, a-theoretical applications to the latest structural contributions. We also discuss challenges and implement methods to estimate empirical gravity equations. We finish with a presentation and examples of numerical simulations with the structural gravity model. Throughout the analysis we attempt to emphasize the links and importance of transportation costs for the trade literature and we outline avenues where we believe interdisciplinary contributions between the international trade and transportation economics fields will be most valuable.

Hierarchical Value Chains Encompassing Freight Transportation and Logistics Sectors in the United States

This research reveals value chain (VC) clusters in which freight transportation modes (i.e., truck, rail, air, water, and pipelines), freight supporting activities (i.e., couriers and messengers and warehousing and storage), and other industry sectors have strong economic inter-dependencies. The most recent input–output data in the United States were used to construct the 2014 direct requirements matrix and generate a network of economic interdependencies between industry sectors. Community detection, a complex network analysis method, was used to reveal the Corresponding VCs in the economic network. A novel procedure uncovered hierarchical VC communities (VCCs) for each freight transportation and logistics sector. Thus, seven distinctive VCCs with unique underlying activities were found. In general, freight industries are hierarchically clustered to VCCs related to raw materials; services; metals; agriculture; textile, apparel, and paper; wood products; and others. Results are important for the areas of transportation economics, regional economic development, competitiveness, and multimodal freight transportation.

The ideas for future economic growth (To the 110th birth anniversary of academician T. S. Khachaturov)

The article analyzes academician T. S. Khachaturov contribution to the development of economic theory and practice. We name the following areas of his pioneering research and applications: the basic theory of economic growth efficiency, investment efficiency, natural resource and environmental economics, transport economics.

Intellectual capital formation in new economic space based on high-speed transport systems

Introduction: The competitiveness of national transport systems in the global economy is primarily determined by their innovativeness, which influences the quality, cost of transport services and, as a consequence, the degree of customer satisfaction. The innovative capacity of an economic agent, in turn, depends largely on the size and quality of intellectual capital. Method: The "Economics of Transport of high speeds". Result: In modern Russia the vector of transport system innovation development is determined by such an important indicator of the transportation process, as the delivery time of goods and passengers. An obvious consequence of the actualization of this vector of development of national transport system is the need of the Russian economy in its own personnel and scientific support for high-speed traffic development projects. One of the leading transport universities of the Russian Federation, training industry experts, is the Petersburg State Transport University. Scientific and personnel potential of the University can be successfully used in the formation of the Eurasian economic space high-tech network of high-speed traffic. Since 2015, in order to generate the intellectual capital for the Russian transport industry development, needed for creation of the national competitive innovative transport system, a new master's program "High-speed transport economics" has been implemented on the basis of the Transportation Economics Department, the PGUPS. This program is aimed at proactive quality training of competitive highly qualified specialists with innovative thinking, modern in-depth knowledge, skills and competences in the field of economics and management of transport companies (all modes of transport). Conclusion: The socio-economic impact as a result of the implementation of the program is that the use of intellectual capital and organizational and managerial skills of its graduates for creation in Russia the competitive high-speed intelligent transport system will help to speed up delivery of goods and passengers, increase population mobility, enhance the economic and socio-cultural integration of the regions of the country, the sustainable territorial development of Russia, growth of labor productivity, improvement of transport services quality, the competitiveness of the national transport system in the global market of transport services, increase the use of transport-transit potential of the Russian Federation, its budget revenues from the export of transport services.

Attention to Risk and Return: Choice Experiment of the Stated and Inferred Use of Investment Attributes

This paper applies a choice experiment method to analyze investors’ attention to investment attributes. Prior research mainly in environmental, agricultural, and transport economics has observed that people actually use different attributes than which they say in choice experiment tasks. This research examines do people pay attention to all the given investment attributes, and if they do not, whether the self-reported attribute attendance corresponds to the behavior inferred from the choices. The experiment is conducted among a pool of 845 financially literate subjects, which enables a study of the factors affecting the investment decisions of informed individuals. The choice experiment puts the subjects in a decision making situation in which they are presented with hypothetical investment opportonities in the agricultural and food production sector. The investments are described with four attributes: voting right, return right, capital appreciation, and expect return. We use the equality-constrained latent class (ECLC) method to infer the choice patterns.The comparison of the stated attribute attendance patterns to the inferred attribute non-attendance patterns shows that the investors are prone to overstate the importance of expected return in their choices. The result indicates that individuals may not be fully aware of the factors affecting their investment decisions. Finding such behavioral bias among financial professionals implies that financially less knowledgeable people may be even more prone to uninformed investment decisions, be for example lured by the marketing of financial products with high returns.

Red ferroviaria y transportes ferroviarios. Su carácter sistémico y la necesaria coordinación entre Administraciones Territoriales

El carácter sistémico del ferrocarril es consustancial a tan importante modo de transporte, pero no ha sido siempre bien comprendido. La noción de red es conocida por la Economía del Transporte y supone considerar ciertos principios y características de las redes que explican las particularidades de las industrias en red, incluido el ferrocarril. En el ámbito del Derecho, se parte de una previsión constitucional ajena a la realidad ferroviaria. Luego se han desarrollado categorías jurídicas específicas, como las infraestructuras en red, pero dichas construcciones dogmáticas parten de una equiparación entre infraestructura y red que se estima inadecuada o reduccionista. Finalmente, el concepto de red ha sido asumido por el Tribunal Constitucional como elemento funcional que permite delimitar las competencias sobre el ferrocarril, superando criterios formalistas alejados de la realidad. Se concluye que cualquier política sectorial o análisis jurídico del ferrocarril debe tomar en consideración su condición sistémica.

Equilibrium traffic dynamics in a bathtub model: A special case

For a quarter century, a top priority in transportation economics has been to develop models of rush-hour traffic dynamics that incorporate hypercongestion – situations of heavy congestion where throughput decreases as traffic density increases. Unfortunately, even the simplest models along these lines appear in general to be analytically intractable, and none of the models that have made approximations in order to achieve tractability has gained widespread acceptance. This paper takes a different tack, developing an analytical solution for a special case – a no-toll equilibrium in an isotropic downtown area with identical commuters, Greenshields' congestion technology, and the α−β cost function (no late arrivals permitted). This is followed by a discussion of directions for future research.

Superstitions, street traffic, and subjective well-being

Congestion plays a central role in urban and transportation economics. Existing estimates of congestion costs rely on stated or revealed preferences studies. We explore a complementary measure of congestion costs based on self-reported happiness. Exploiting quasi-random variation in daily congestion in Beijing that arises because of superstitions about the number four, we estimate a strong effect of daily congestion on self-reported happiness. When benchmarking this effect against the relationship between income and self-reported happiness we compute implied congestion costs that are several times larger than conventional estimates. Several factors, including the value of reliability and externalities on non-travelers, can reconcile our alternative estimates with the existing literature.

Finite-size effect and the components of multifractality in transport economics volatility based on multifractal detrending moving average method

Abstract Analysis of freight rate volatility characteristics attracts more attention after year 2008 due to the effect of credit crunch and slowdown in marine transportation. The multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis technique is employed to analyze the time series of Baltic Dry Bulk Freight Rate Index and the market trend of two bulk ship sizes, namely Capesize and Panamax for the period: March 1st 1999–February 26th 2015. In this paper, the degree of the multifractality with different fluctuation sizes is calculated. Besides, multifractal detrending moving average (MF-DMA) counting technique has been developed to quantify the components of multifractal spectrum with the finite-size effect taken into consideration. Numerical results show that both Capesize and Panamax freight rate index time series are of multifractal nature. The origin of multifractality for the bulk freight rate market series is found mostly due to nonlinear correlation.

THE IMPACT OF ENVIRONMENTAL COST LEADERSHIP STRATEGY FOR ACHIEVING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The significance of environmental cost leadership strategies emerges as being an approach and a method for resolving the environment's problem within the Arabian aviation companies and how they affect the economics of air transportation in Egypt, and so the Egyptian economy and the society as a whole, leading finally to sustainable development and optimal utilization of potential resources, and keeping at the same time the future coming generations' rights. The study is to be applied on Egyptair Company. For the previous, this research problem is crystallized in that: Arabic airline companies are suffering from ignoring adoption of environmental cost strategies; in particular, cost leadership strategies, which lead into a mystery and non-transparency adoption of the concept of sustainable development for financial and administrative performance; causing consequently several problems and difficulties in the objective measurement of environmental costs and so in turn pricing, operations, marketing etc Research Objectives: This research purpose is to enrich the real life and the scientific research library with the significance of environmental cost strategies as one of the followed environmental strategies for resolving the environment's problem within the Arab airline companies and how they affect the economics of air transportation in Egypt, and so the Egyptian economy and the society as a whole which finally leads to the sustainable development and optimal utilization of potential resources, keeping at the same time the future coming generations' rights, in application on Egyptair Company. This research significance outflows from its handling of one of the important and modern problems encounters presently organizations and business institutions (industrial, service, or commercial) is how to conciliate between reducing environmental pollution rates and attaining a unique excellent level of environmental quality; and in return, reducing environmental costs in terms of the intensifying levels of competition that establishments face currently which leads finally to sustainable development. Research method: First, the Inductive (Librarian – Theoretical)Method: It is counting on a mixture of referential data using the inductive approach and some scientific references that tackle with environmental costs. Second, the Deductive Method: It is used through application on Egyptair Cargo Company and other airline companies; counting on measurement approach, personal interviews, analyzing and deduces results from basic data (primary data) using an investigation form to be distributed on employees to explore the environmental strategies used in Egyptair company and its relation to sustainable development. Research sample: it consists of (32) individuals working in air flight sector, particularly in Egyptair Company, without neglecting other companies working in air flight field in Egypt. The sample is represented in Yemen airline, Turkey Airline, and Jordan Airline. Study Instruments: the researcher has designed an investigation form suits the research purposes and assists testing validity of hypotheses. Study results: That There are significant differences between the financial performance in airlines companies adopting strategy of environmental cost leadership and those didn't adopt that policy. Adopting an environmental costing leadership strategy leads to increase of revenues and profits of the airline companies, reflecting in turn on achieving sustainable development for those companies. Moreover, fostering an environmental costing leadership strategy leads to improvement of the entity's image within community, being reflected also on sustainable development.

Don’t think of them as roads. Think of them as road transport markets: Congestion pricing as a neoliberal political project

For some time now, many planners have embraced the idea of congestion pricing, an idea that has its origins in the field of transport economics. A positive attitude towards pricing, however, seems to be at odds with values commonly held by planners. To clarify this paradox, we need to thoroughly understand the history and sociology of the idea, and to acquire such understanding, this dialogue discusses the claim that the history of thinking about congestion pricing can best be understood by seeing it as a discursive politics of the market. The current view on congestion and road pricing originated in the 1950s, and there is clearly a link between the dissemination of the idea of congestion pricing and the rise of neoliberal thinking in general, although a different, rather Keynesian, tradition has continued to exist since the early days. The article also presents some criticisms of congestion pricing based on technical, equity as well as normative arguments. Finally, some attention is devoted to the format of the paper, given that it is written as a dialogue.

Guest Editorial

As a premise, readers should be informed that some decades ago the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research identified a number of academic groups, based on their main disciplines: one of these groups within the area of Engineering was entitled “Transport”, which can also be understood as “Transport Systems”. The Engineering area includes 53 sub-groups, in a similar way to the ERC Panels in “Physical Sciences and Engineering” and “Social Sciences and Humanities” (e.g. SH2_8 Energy, transportation and mobility). Over the years, the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research changed the focus of these groups according to research needs. A so-called academic “Declaratoria”, which resembles the concept of a “Declaration of purpose”, describes the general academic aim of each of these groups; the one referring to “Transport systems” includes “ITS”, and has a similar description to the definition provided on the official IET Intelligent Transport Systems website. Every two years the academicians belonging to this group meet together, in order to share their scientific and technical results during a scientific seminar ; the most recent one took place at the Politecnico di Torino (Turin) in September 2015. The Italian Universities alternate with each other to host the event. The main issues of this scientific seminar can be summarised as pursuing innovative transport systems, services and solutions, in particular the subjects related to a gradual independence of the main energy source that transport systems are based on and the use of lower energy per unit mass in motorised mobility in order to reduce the energy consumption per person and – consequently – greenhouse gas emissions. The abovementioned is background information to help readers understand how this Special Issue came about. This edition was developed by selecting 21 papers out of the 43 that were presented at the Seminar. The subject areas of these 21 papers were considered to be relevant to the scope of IET Intelligent Transport Systems. It is clear that the majority of papers presented at the Seminar were dealing with ITS which coincides with the main EU research objective of making the European transport system more resource-efficient, climate and environmentally friendly, safe and seamless for the benefit of all citizens, the economy and society. We are moving towards a smart, green and integrated transport system, as conceived in the Horizon 2020 research programme. Following the journal's peer review process,eight outstanding papers were accepted for publication in this Special Issue. Angela Di Febbraro is Professor of Transportation Engineering at the University of Genoa, Italy. She obtained her Master's Degree in Electronic Engineering (1987), and PhD in Electronic and Computer Engineering at the University of Genoa. At a European level, she currently holds the office of Italian National Delegate in the Horizon 2020 Programme Committee of the Societal Challenge “Smart, green, and integrated transport”. She is the author of more than 200 scientific papers, mostly published in international journals and conferences. She is currently involved in several research projects. Her transport research interests have focused on the main aspects of planning, control and optimisation at a system-level, with special reference to safety, sustainability, intermodal and ITS. Agostino Nuzzolo is Professor of Transport at the Faculty of Engineering, and the former President of the Italian Academic Society of Transport (SIDT). For several years, he was lecturer at Summer Courses on Advanced Transportation Network Modelling at MIT, Boston, USA. His research activity is relative to the theory of transportation systems and its application in transportation analysis, modelling and planning. His main research areas are: travel behavioural models for ITS and ICT; demand and supply models for urban freight transport and city logistics; assignment models for transit networks; land use and transport interaction models; trip chain models in urban areas; simulation models for road accidents; DSS for strategic and tactical transportation planning. He is the author or co-author of several books, some of them concerning the innovative run-oriented approach to dynamic transit network modelling, and of more than 200 papers. Bruno Dalla Chiara has been Associate Professor at the Politecnico di Torino (I) in the field of Transport Systems since 2005; he obtained the national qualification as full Professor in Transport Systems in 2014. He holds a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering, in which he specialised in transport systems, engineering and economics (1993), and a Ph.D. in Transport Engineering, in which he specialised in ITS (1997). He holds the chair, at the Politecnico di Torino, in “Engineering and operation of Transport Systems”. He is the author of a number of publications, mainly concerning the engineering and design of transport systems, rail and intermodal transport and ITS.

The Future of Transport Surveys: Users’ Requirements for Official Transport Statistics

Official transport statistics is a broad, complex and important domain in the area of official statistics. Due to the dynamics of transport markets, their economic framework and legal regulation as well as the evolving challenges for transport economics, companies, research and policy the statistical users’ needs are also subject to continuous change. This article presents the main results of a study conducted by the Institute of Transport and LogisticsManagement at Vienna University of Economics and Business which focused on the requirements on future developments in the field of official transport statistics from the users’ perspective.

Understanding connectivity to international markets: a systematic review

ABSTRACTImproving freight connectivity is increasingly a topic at the centre of the international trade and transport policy agendas. An examination of available documents and studies in both the policy-making and the academic fields shows that the concept of freight connectivity has often been defined in different ways, and thus has taken a variety of meanings. This poses the question on what connectivity is and what are its determinants in the context of international trade. We are not aware of any studies that have analysed, in a systematic way, the different perspectives and determinants of freight connectivity so as to increase access to international markets. This paper seeks to fill this gap by performing a systematic literature review that spans disciplines such as Transport Engineering, Transport and International Economics, and Supply Chain Management. The outcome of this examination is a multidisciplinary framework that hopefully will help stakeholders to understand freight connectivity to international markets better, as well as guide future research and analysis in policy-making.