Stefan Proost

The political economy of pricing and capacity decisions for congestible local public goods in a federal state

This paper studies the political economy of pricing and investment for excludable and congestible public goods in a federal state. Currently, we observe a wide variety of practices, ranging from federal gasoline taxes and road investment to the local supply of -- and sometimes free access to -- libraries, parking spaces and public swimming pools. The two-region model we develop allows for spill-overs between regions, it takes into account congestion, and it captures both heterogeneity between and within regions. Regional decisions are taken by majority voting; decisions at the federal level are taken either according to the principle of a minimum winning coalition or through cooperative bargaining. We have the following results. First, when users form the majority in at least one region, decentralized decision making performs certainly better than centralized decision making if spill-overs are not too large. Centralized decisions may yield higher welfare than decentralization only if users have a large majority and the infrastructure in a given region is intensively used by both local and outside users. Second, if non-users form a majority in both regions, centralized and decentralized decision making yield the same socially undesirable outcome, with prices that are much too high. Third, both bargaining and imposing uniform price restrictions across regions improve the performance of centralized decisions. Fourth, the performance of decentralized supply is strongly enhanced by local self-financing rules; it prevents potential exploitation of users within regions. Self-financing rules at the central level are not necessarily welfare-improving. Finally, the results of this paper contribute to a better understanding of actual policy-making.

Road Pricing and Public Transport Pricing Reform in Paris: Complements or Substitutes?

This paper explores reforms of pricing of private and public transport in Paris. Paris has used a policy of very low public transport prices and no road pricing. The Paris transport network is represented as a stylized concentric city with the choice between car, rapid rail, metro and buses as well as two income classes and different transport motives. The model is used to test what the efficiency gains are of introducing road pricing and of increasing public transit prices in the peak. Are both reforms re-enforcing each other or are they largely substitutes? We find that a zonal pricing scheme for the center of Paris combined with higher public transport fares in the peak perform best. The benefits of an overall capacity extension of public transport supply are much lower than the benefits of pricing reforms and could very well not pass the cost benefit test.

Policies to reduce traffic externalities in cities

This paper considers various policy measures to reduce traffic externalities in cities, including externality-reducing investments, tolls, emission standards, low emission zones, and bypass capacity to guide traffic around the city center. Using a simple model that distinguishes local and through traffic, we study the optimal use of these instruments by an urban government that cares for the welfare of its inhabitants, and we compare the results with those preferred by a federal authority that takes into account the welfare of all road users. Our results include the following. First, compared to the federal social optimum, we show that the city government will over-invest in externality-reducing infrastructure whenever this infrastructure increases the generalized cost of transit traffic. Second, comparing emission standards and road tolls, we find that cities with a lot of commuters will favor tolls, even though from the federal perspective standards are better. Third, when implementing low emission zones, the urban government will set both the fee for non-compliance and the standard at a higher level than the federal government. Moreover, at sufficiently high transit levels the urban government will prefer imposing a toll instead of implementing a low emission zone. Fourth, if the city can toll the urban infrastructure, it will only invest in bypass capacity when it is allowed to earn extra toll revenues on the bypass that exceed investment costs. Although the paper focuses on non-congestion externalities, most insights also hold in the presence of congestion.

A Small Model of Equilibrium Mechanisms in a City

We use a simple economy with two interconnected geographical zones. Individuals can live and work in one of the two zones or can commute between them. This model is used to explore the dynamics of housing and work decisions after a permanent shock in labour demand occurred in one of the two zones. We illustrate the role of the different levels of expectation of developers and government transport agencies for the equilibrium on the housing and the labour markets. The model is used to identify better Cost-Benefit rules for transport investments and the role of coordination between housing and transport decisions.