International trade has grown rapidly in the post-war era with trade volume growing twenty-seven fold between 1950 and 2007, three times faster than world GDP growth (WTO, 2007). Growth in trade is expected to outpace the GDP growth also over the next 50 years, according to recent OECD...

This paper reviews methods that seek to draw causal inference from non-experimental data and shows how they can be applied to undertake ex-post evaluation of transport interventions. In particular, the paper discusses the underlying principles of techniques for treatment effect estimation with...

La France est un acteur clé de l’Europe ferroviaire. Elle occupe, et de loin, la première place pour la grande vitesse ferroviaire (53 milliards de voyageurs-kilomètres en 2013). Grâce à l’importance de ce segment de marché, la France est le pays d’Europe qui affiche chaque année le...

In France, the obligation to conduct an ex-post assessment is relatively recent (1982) but it has in fact revealed some methodological problems that flow from the retrospective nature of the exercise. This report shows that some of those difficulties can be overcome through the establishment of...

External effects or externalities "consist of the costs and benefits felt beyond or 'external to' those causing the effect" (Anderson, 2006). In the case of transportation, the negative externalities (costs) can take the form of air pollution, noise and accidents. Since external effects do not...

The global airline industry is slowly returning to profitability, but there is a long and difficult road ahead. According to IATA, the industry raised a profit of $ 8 billion in 20112 and it is forecasted to make a profit of $ 11 billion in 2013.3 However, these improved profit margins continue...

It is widely held that large institutional investors such as pension funds and sovereign wealth funds with long term liabilities and a low risk appetite are ideally suited to invest in transportation infrastructure assets. Despite the theoretical ideal match between a large source of capital and...

This paper lays out a framework for managing complex asset systems, such as road networks, with a view to optimising life-cycle value of the asset base. It is based on discussions at the International transport Forum Roundtable on Sustainable Road Funding held in Paris 25-26 October 20121 and...

Railway efficiency is a topic of interest worldwide for railway managers operating in competitive markets and for fiscally strained governments. Several recent studies indicate that European railways differ in terms of their efficiency. Based on a comparison with some major non-European railway...

Many major airports are hubs for network carriers at the same time as serving a large local market. The complementarity between these functions is often seen as a prerequisite for viable hub operations, suggesting that spreading the hub network over multiple airports can be very costly and...