This paper presents, a non-technical introduction to the economic principles relevant for transport pricing design and analysis. We provide the basic rationale behind pricing of externalities, discuss why simple Pigouvian tax rules that equate charges to marginal external costs are not optimal...

This paper studies the interaction between commuting, job mobility, and housing mobility. Many conventional models assume that the employment location has priority over the residential location and that the latter is adapted to the former. This implies that commutes which start with a job change...

In spite of a growing recognition of the importance of supply conditions for the level and volatility of house prices, empirical work on housing supply outside the US is scarce. This paper considers various measures of housing supply in the Netherlands, where real house prices have roughly...

We use the monocentric model of a city to derive a simple cost-benefit rule for the optimal provision of open space. Although many researchers have investigated the value of open space in cities, few of them have compared it to the costs of providing this amenity. The rule derived here is...

This paper discusses various aspects of the economic analysis of commuting behavior. It starts with a review of two difficulties associated with urban economics models: the empirically falsified prediction of the relation between commuting time and income, and the presence of substantial excess...

This paper argues that search theory is a useful addition to the way economists and geographers have approached the study of commuting behavior. This is illustrated by showing that introduction of a spatial element into the standard model of job search leads to the prediction of critical...

Conventional economic models of traffic congestion assume that the relation between road use and speed is a technical one. In this paper we derive the speed-flow relationship from more fundamental considerations concerning driving behaviour. We develop a structural model in which drivers choose...

In this paper, we investigate congestion caused by differences in desired or possible speeds. Especially outside peak hours, speed differences are probably one of the most important reasons for congestion. Although the model setting, with one lane and no overtaking, may seem simple at first...