Der deutsche Taximarkt - das letzte (Kollektiv-) Monopol im Sturm der „neuen Zeit“

The increasing number of Smartphone-Apps and web-based tools, e.g. route planners, improve the transparency of taxi rides with regard to prices and routing. Trips can be planned easily and the payment is safe and uncomplicated. These innovations are very important in the recent discussion about the necessity of regulatory intervention in the taxi market. This is mainly because technical innovations reduce asymmetric distributed information between market participants. However, asymmetric information is not the only source of market failure that requires the state to interfere in market activity. The provision of taxis yields an externality that might legitimate market interference. In order to understand the mechanisms and theoretical arguments, the paper refers to a model by Cairns und Liston-Heyes (1994) as well as Frankena (1984) to generate empirically testable hypotheses. Importantly, the empirical part of the paper tests whether the regulator takes the costs structures into account and, therefore, acts for the purpose of either public or private interests. We analyze price differences in 393 tariff regulations with respect to several variables such as urban or rural area, western or eastern Germany, the existence of an airport or a fair, the validity of the tariff regulation as well as the density of population. The results suggest that the regulator for the most of the considered variables takes the cost structures in the taxi market into account. Nonetheless, the population variable seems questionable. The reasons for the puzzling results might refer to different perceptions with regard to waiting time in sparsely populated areas. In sum, the results implicate that technical inventions related to the taxi market do no longer justify an obligatory knowledge test of streets and important places (Ortskundeprüfung). These reforms are likely to revolutionize the mobility market in large cities because the taxies are going to be superseded by livery vehicles (Mietwagen). In order to save the taxi sector from ruin, a regulation of both the taxi and the livery vehicle market seems to be an alternative.