This paper compares "first-best" highway investment when congestion pricing is in effect with "second-best" investment when such pricing is not used. The paper's main result is that as the pricing of roads falls below social costs, "second-best" investment expands to accommodate demand, but not by nearly so much as would be called for under first-best cost-benefit criteria. Under second-best investment, the level of time congestion is allowed to rise to compensate for the absence of monetary congestion pricing. There is some suggestion that overinvestment in American highways could have occurred from following first-best investment criteria when second-best criteria were appropriate.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().
Related research
Keywords:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)