Nonlinear pricing on private roads with congestion and toll collection costs

摘要: Nonlinear pricing (a form of second-degree price discrimination) is widely used in transportation and other industries but it has been largely overlooked the road-pricing literature. This paper explores incentives for a profit-maximizing toll-road operator to adopt some simple nonlinear schemes when there congestion collecting tolls costly. Users are assumed differ their demands use road. Regardless severity congestion, an access fee always profitable implement either as part two-part tariff or alternative paying toll. Use fees profit maximization can increase decrease welfare relative usage-only maximization. Hence ban on could reduce welfare.