Search Frictions and Efficiency in Decentralized Transportation Markets

Giulia Brancaccio, Myrto Kalouptsidi, Theodore Papageorgiou and Nicola Rosaia

No 27300, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In this paper we explore efficiency and optimal policy in decentralized transportation markets that suffer from search frictions, such as taxicabs, trucks and bulk shipping. We illustrate the impact of two externalities: the well-known thin/thick market externalities and what we call pooling externalities. We characterize analytically the conditions for efficiency, show how they translate into efficient pricing rules, as well as derive the optimal taxes for the case where the planner is not able to set prices. We use our theoretical results to explore welfare loss and optimal policy in dry bulk shipping. We find that the constrained efficient allocation achieves 6% welfare gains, while the first-best allocation corresponding to the frictionless world, achieves 14% welfare gains. This suggests that policy can achieve substantial gains, even if it does not alleviate search frictions, e.g. through a centralizing platform. Finally, we demonstrate that simple policies designed to mimic the optimal taxes perform well.

JEL-codes: F1 L0 L91 R4 R48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-des, nep-reg and nep-tre
Note: EFG IO ITI
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27300.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27300

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27300

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().