Bottleneck congestion and distribution of work start times: The economics of staggered work hours revisited
Yuki Takayama ()
Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 2015, vol. 81, issue P3, 830-847
Abstract:
Since the seminal work of Henderson (Henderson, J.V., 1981. The economics of staggered work hours. Journal of Urban Economics 9 (3), 349–364), a number of studies have examined the effect of staggered work hours by analyzing models of work start time choice that consider the trade-off between negative congestion externalities and positive production externalities. However, these studies employed flow congestion models to describe traffic congestion. This study develops a model of work start time choice with bottleneck congestion and discloses the intrinsic properties of the model. To this end, this study extends Henderson’s model to incorporate bottleneck congestion. By utilizing the properties of a potential game, we characterize equilibrium and optimal distributions of work start times. We also show that Pigouvian tax/subsidy policies generally yield multiple equilibria and that the first-best optimum must be a stable equilibrium under Pigouvian policies, whereas the second-best optimum in which policymakers cannot eliminate queuing congestion can be unstable.
Keywords: Staggered work hours; Bottleneck congestion; Production effects; Potential game; Stability; Pigouvian policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019126151500168X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
Working Paper: Bottleneck congestion and distribution of work start times: The economics of staggered work hours revisited (2014) 
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:eee:transb:v:81:y:2015:i:p3:p:830-847
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01
DOI: 10.1016/j.trb.2015.07.021
Access Statistics for this article
Transportation Research Part B: Methodological is currently edited by Fred Mannering
More articles in Transportation Research Part B: Methodological from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().