Costs and efficiency of highway concessionaires: a survey of Italian operators

Jérôme Massiani and Giorgio Ragazzi

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Measuring the productivity of highway concessionaires is very relevant, especially when a price cap regulation is applied where tariff increases are based on expected improvements of productivity. Output may be measured in terms of traffic or network length, or a combination of both, while quality of service should ideally be accounted for. To measure productivity we consider only operating costs, as amortization and financial costs depend upon the original highway design and historical costs. A cross section analysis of the Italian concessionaires shows that: 1) operating costs depend on both traffic and capacity; 2) economies of scale are relevant but their estimate is very sensitive to the model specification; 3) there are large differences in efficiency among operators, indicating that there could be significant room for yardstick competition. We subsequently consider the main economic data regarding the major Italian concessionaire (Autostrade spa) over two decades. Revenues increased greatly, even more than traffic, while operating costs remained substantially stable in real terms, as the automation of toll collection allowed the company to reduce the number of collectors by almost half. Finally, a comparison between Italian and French concessionaires shows that the latter have much lower operating costs, which cannot be entirely explained by economies of scale or lower personnel costs.

Keywords: Highway; Regulation; Productivity; Price-cap (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L91 R42 R48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published in European Transport 38 (2008): pp. 85-106

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/36993/1/MPRA_paper_36993.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Costs and efficiency of highway concessionaires: a survey of Italian operators (2008)
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:pra:mprapa:36993

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().