Jd. Rolle, ESTIMATION OF SWISS RAILWAY DEMAND WITH COMPUTATION OF ELASTICITIES, TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH PART E-LOGISTICS AND TRANSPORTATION REVIEW, 33(2), 1997, pp. 117-127
Citations number
16
Categorie Soggetti
Transportation,"Operatione Research & Management Science",Transportation
We adapt the 'Almost Ideal Demand System' (AIDS) from consumer expendi
ture theory to estimate an equation explaining demand for rail passsen
ger travel. The motivation far using an AIDS is essentially empirical:
(1) The model is flexible enough to easily enable the insertion of sp
ecific variables to take account of variation in the characteristics o
f goods (examples cited include 'speed of transportation' and 'density
of the railway network'); (2) the obtained equation ensures a good fi
t to the data and compares favorably with other specifications. We der
ive a demand function and formulas for the elasticities and other para
meters. The model is applied to Swiss data, using a three-way error co
mponents model on cross-section and time series data. We apply a linea
r, simplified, version of the AIDS and we use an iterative approximati
on of the true AIDS price index. Thanks to bootstrap replications, we
simulate the distribution of the most relevant estimates of the elasti
cities. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.