Panel Review: Experimental Economics Examination of Congestion Pricing
December 5, 2011 - December 5, 2011
Georgia State University
Experimental economics has been successfully used in examining tax compliance, public goods, political economy, tax incidence, game-theoretic models of imperfect competition, willingness to pay and other experiments. This research examines price incentives focused on congestion and road pricing of highway services. Large urban areas currently experience hours of congestion with large economic costs while at the same time, public funding for highways has been decreasing - simply building more roads is not an option either financially or environmentally. By examining participants risk attitudes, this research will improve the understanding as to how travelers make decisions when faced with road pricing and congestion. In the long term this innovative research will expand evidence-based methods for setting user-based highway fees and will assist policy makers with robust decisions concerning the provision of highway services and pricing.
This panel review meeting will focus on the research hypothesis, design, implementation and analysis. The 3-year research effort is entering its 2nd year and has completed several important milestones including experimental design, implementation and completion of 2 of the 3 participant sessions.