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 ABOUT TER
Why create a new SIG on transport economic regulation?
The culture of independent public regulation is taking hold everywhere, but is meeting strong and "natural" resistance from the same political bodies that are supposed to implement the relevant regulatory institutions. The reasons are related to the concept of "capture" that is only one of the problems faced by regulation (natural monopolies, information failures, externalities, social concerns, etc) that requires a deep analysis involving both theoretical and practical aspects.
Regulatory problems for the transport sector
The transport sector faces special technical difficulties: the different transport modes show quite articulated regulatory problems, ranging from the presence of public and private operators, wide social objectives and constraints, different innovative patterns, different relations linking infrastructures and services.
Research areas
Since regulation has a vast number of different meanings and cover a broad scope of problems, the SIG-4 will initially focus on the sub-topic of infrastructure regulation. This must not be intended as a limitation, since the aspects of services regulation can be included and integrated at any moment, both when needed dealing with infrastructure, and if and when the forum has expressed a sufficient interest in this extension. Concerning the infrastructure regulation, a first issue that we suggest is related to the communalities that emerge in regulating different transport infrastructures across modes:
o common characteristics being large and long-lasting investments;
o slow technical progress, complex political goals,
o special relations with the transport services using the infrastructure;
o peculiar land use implications, etc.
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