Pricing and investment of cross-border transport infrastructure

Abstract

We develop a simple two-country model of international trade in which the transportation cost between countries is endogenously determined by pricing and investment decisions of cross-border transport infrastructure. We evaluate alternative regimes of pricing and investment, i.e., free access (e.g., public road), pricing by two governments, and private operation. We also examine the effect of integrating operation. It is shown that investment rule in free access regime is inefficient. On the other hand, the investment rule is efficient if infrastructure charge is levied either by the government or by the private operators. We obtain the welfare ranking of alternative regimes under specific functional form, show how the welfare results depend on pricing policies.