In this paper we analyse the gap between present transport prices and efficient transport prices. Efficient transport prices are those prices that maximise economic welfare, including external costs (congestion, air pollution, accidents). The methodology is applied to six urban and interregional...

Governments may be hindered in setting taxes on markets in which the consumer can choose to consume the good but not pay the tax. An example is urban on-street parking. If government attempts to ration demand to supply via a peak-load fee, but fails to invest in costly enforcement, drivers park...

We consider an environmental enforcement agency who uses the measurement of ambient pollution to guide its inspections of individual polluters. We compare two different uses of this information. In a first model, the agency uses a ``threshold strategy": if ambient pollution exceeds an endogenous...

In this paper we incorporate monitoring and enforcement aspects in the choice of environmental policy instruments in a general equilibrium framework. Goulder et al. (J.Pub.Econ., 1999) look into the choice of policy instruments in the presence of distortionary taxes. We extend this model by no...

Evidence suggests that a considerable proportion of peak-period trips are made for purposes other than for commuting to or from work. Given the different degrees of Hicksian complementarity with the labour market, optimal tax theory suggests that, in a second-best world, different trip purposes...

We consider the enforcement of an environmental standard if the polluters can choose between two levels of noncompliance. The probabilities of inspection are determined autonomously by an inspection agency who permanently monitors ambient pollution. We show that this monitoring creates strategic...

When discussing tradable permit systems relating to water, three fundamentally different fields of application can be identified (Kraemer and Banholzer, 1999). Firstly tradable permits for water, or tradable water abstraction rights, can be used for quantitative water resource management....