Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/86898 
Year of Publication: 
2010
Series/Report no.: 
Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper No. 10-016/3
Publisher: 
Tinbergen Institute, Amsterdam and Rotterdam
Abstract: 
In studying congestion tolling, it is important to account for heterogeneity in preferences of drivers, as ignoring it can bias the welfare gains. We analyse the effects of tolling, in the bottleneck model, with continuous heterogeneity in the value of time and schedule delay. The welfare gain of a time-variant toll increases with heterogeneity in the value of schedule delay. With heterogeneity, tolling makes the arrival ordering more efficient, and this lowers scheduling costs. If there is not much more heterogeneity in the value of time than in the value of schedule delay, then first-best tolling decreases the generalised price for most users. In our model, first-best tolling is not most detrimental for the lowest values of time and schedule delay: it raises prices more for users with an average value of schedule delay and a slightly larger value of time. Further, the lowest values of time are among those who gain most from a public pay-lane.
Subjects: 
biases in calculated welfare effects
bottleneck model
distributional effects
heterogeneity in the value of schedule delay
heterogeneity in the value of time
second-best tolls.
JEL: 
R41
R48
H23
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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