Economic Analysis Of Road Service & Its Commercial Operation And Government Regulation

A total of 140 thousands kilometers of toll road has been built in about 20 countries or areas of the whole world to the end of the year 2001, of which there are more than 100 thousands kilometers in China. The expressways of all about 20 thousands kilometers, 50% of roads of Grade , 2/3 of all large-scale bridges and tunnels in China are toll roads. Now, the toll road plays a very important role in the society and economy of China. But there are many theoretical and practical questions in these fields: how to run a road, for a road firm how to operate toll road and for government how to regulate the operation of toll roads. It is the researching goal of this dissertation to answer these questions.From microeconomic angle, it identifies the concept of road, road service and its producer. Then, it analyses economic properties of road service, for examples as externalities of production and consumption, structure and forming causes of monopolistic market, the nature of quasi-public goods, the attributes of supply and demand as service product. These identifications establish a base for following study of practical problems of road service.According to analytical theory of production and cost of microeconomics, based on theories and researching accomplishments of traffic engineering, highway technology and transport economics, on road service are studied the nature of joint products, the changing tendency of marginal return and returns to scale, the structural characteristics of the production and consumption cost, the variable regular pattern of cost in long run and short run. So that, it is explained for producing and consuming to simultaneously happen, for consuming to have external diseconomies and for market to be natural monopoly.Based on making use of economic research accomplishments in the field of transportation, the demand for road service and the behavior of road user is studied. Through having designed and made the investigation of road user behavior as consumer of road service according to principles of economic psychology, the important factors deciding the road user behavior of china are extracted. So that, defects of the demand model used in traffic volume prediction of toll roads in china are identified. It is presented that the demand model should be based on the true behavior of road user according to practical investigation.The partial equilibrium between tolling price and demand in the monopoly or oligopoly market is the basic price theory of road firm. The relationship among price,income and profit of road firm is studied, and the calculating models of toll pricing are given. At the same time, the behavior for pricing and competing of road firm is also briefly discussed.Based on the academic study of the modern marketing, the characteristics and strategies of road service marketing are analyzed. The needing and buying behavior of road users in the two kinds of personal and organizational market are expounded, the segmenting, targeting and positioning of road firm market are discussed. The pricing strategies for competing situation, resources, demand and market life cycle of road firm is put forward. Traditionally, the pricing method can be categorized into three kind of orientations of cost, demand and competition, but a new method of government regulation orientation is increased, because the government should certainly regulate the industry of road service.According to welfare economics and theory of microeconomic policy, the reason, content and method of government regulation for road service are studied. The toll price ideally regulated and social contradiction caused by it is presented, so the toll price practically regulated is given. The regulation strategies for the market defects in three typical cases of different phases of life cycle, tolling of separating a road and tolling of a single road are discussed.In terms of these methods and conclusions of studying above, the organization system of the expressway management of china is analyzed, the suggestions about it are pre...