Mohring and Harwitz (1962) showed that, under certain conditions, an optimally designed and priced road would generate user toll revenues just sufficient to cover its capital costs. Several scholars subsequently explored the robustness of that finding. This paper briefly summarizes further research on the relationship between congestion-toll revenues and road costs. Despite its transparency, the self-financing theorem can lead to erroneous interpretations. The paper’s second part discusses three such possible fallacies. It uses a simple numerical model to investigate them. The model shows that the naïve interpretation of the Mohring-Harwitz rule may lead to substantial welfare losses. These losses are particularly prominent when the difference between capital and investment cost is confused and when balanced-budget constraints are imposed under second-best network conditions. In contrast, losses from imposing a balanced-budget constraint when economies or diseconomies of scale exist are surprisingly small.
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References listed on IDEAS 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.:
Small, K.A. & Gomez-Ibanez, J.A., 1996.
"Urban Transportation,"
Papers
95-96-4, California Irvine - School of Social Sciences.
Other versions:
Small, Kenneth A. & Gomez-Ibanez, Jose A., 1999.
"Urban transportation,"
Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics,
in: P. C. Cheshire & E. S. Mills (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 46, pages 1937-1999
Elsevier.
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