A meta-analysis of price elasticities of transport demand in a general equilibrium framework

Price elasticities of transport demand are an important tool to assess the impacts of pricing policies. Empirical research on these elasticities leads to a rather wide range of outcomes. There is obviously a need for a more rigorous methodological framework. This paper provides a new integrative approach to the estimation of price elasticities while taking into account any combination of characteristics of transport demand found in various empirical studies. To this end, we apply meta-analysis to this set of studies. From the various modelling approaches that underly these studies we develop an overlapping general equilibrium framework that provides a meta-regression equation relating the price elasticity estimate to the study characteristics.

Kremers, Johannes, Peter Nijkamp and Piet Rietveld (2002), A meta-analysis of price elasticities of transport demand in a general equilibrium framework, Economic Modelling 19 , 463-485