Kenneth A. Small

Applied Welfare Economics with Discrete Choice Models

Economists have been paying increasing attention to the study of situations in which consumers face a discrete rather than a continuous set of choices. Such models are potentially very important in evaluating the impact of government programs upon consumer welfare. But very little has been said in general regarding the tools of applied welfare economics indiscrete choice situations. This paper shows how the conventional methods of applied welfare economics can be modified to handle such cases. It focuses on the computation of the excess burden of taxation, and the evaluation of quality change. The results are applied to stochastic utility models, including the popular cases of probit and logit analysis. Throughout, the emphasis is on providing rigorous guidelines for carrying out applied work.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Does Britain or the United States Have the Right Gasoline Tax

This paper develops an analytical framework for assessing the second-best optimal level of gasoline taxation, taking into account unpriced pollution, congestion, and accident externalities and interactions with the broader fiscal system. We provide calculations of the optimal taxes for the United States and the United Kingdom under a wide variety of parameter scenarios, with the gasoline tax substituting for a distorting tax on labor income. Under our central parameter values, the second-best optimal gasoline tax is

THE VALUE OF TIME AND RELIABILITY: MEASUREMENT FROM A VALUE PRICING EXPERIMENT

1.01 per gallon for the United States and

Using the revenues from congestion pricing

1.34 per gallon for the United Kingdom. These values are moderately sensitive to alternative parameter assumptions. The congestion externality is the largest component in both nations, and the higher optimal tax for the United Kingdom is due mainly to a higher assumed value for marginal congestion cost. Revenue-raising needs, incorporated in a “Ramsey” component, also play a significant role, as do accident externalities and local air pollution. The current gasoline tax in the United Kingdom (

A Discrete Choice Model for Ordered Alternatives

2.80 per gallon) is more than twice this estimated optimal level. Potential welfare gains from reducing it are estimated at nearly one-fourth the production cost of gasoline used in the United Kingdom. Even larger gains in the United Kingdom can be achieved by switching to a tax on vehicle miles with equal revenue yield. For the United States, the welfare gains from optimizing the gasoline tax are smaller, but those from switching to an optimal tax on vehicle miles are very large.

Optimal Peak-Load Pricing, Investment, and Service Levels on Urban Expressways

We measure values of time and reliability from 1998 data on actual behavior of commuters on State Route 91 in Orange County, California, where they choose between a free and a variably tolled route. For each route at each time of day and for each day of the week, the distribution of travel times cross different weeks is measured using loop detector data. The best-fitting models represent travel-time by its median and unreliability by the difference between the 90th percentile and the median. We present models of route choice both alone and combined with other choices, namely time of day, car occupancy, and installation of an electronic transponder. In our best model, containing all these choices except time of day, value of time (VOT) is

The incidence of congestion tolls on urban highways

22.87 per hour, while value of reliability is

Should Urban Transit Subsidies Be Reduced

15.12 per hour for men and

Simulating travel reliability

31.91 for women. These values are 72%,48%, and 101%, respectively, of the average wage rate in our sample.

Urban decline and the future of American cities

The economic theory behind congestion pricing relies on using the revenues to help compensate highway users. But can practical methods of using revenues come close to achieving this compensation, and still have salient appeal to important political groups? This paper investigates the possibilities for designing a package of revenue uses that can achieve these twin goals. The suggested approach returns two-thirds of the revenues to travelers through travel allowances and tax reductions, and uses the rest to improve transportation throughout the area, including affected business centers. By replacing regressive sales and fuel taxes, this approach offsets the tendency of the prices alone to have a regressive distributional impact. By lowering taxes, funding new highways, improving transit, and upgrading business centers, the package provides inducements for support from several key interest groups. The potential amounts of money involved are discussed using nationwide data, and in more detail using a case study of ubiquitous facility pricing throughout the Los Angeles region. Illustrative calculations of the effects on various individuals confirm that such a package can create net benefits for a wide spectrum of people and interest groups.