This article is from the public account: Zhibenshe (ID: zhibenshe0-1 ), author: SD (Chi Society president), from the title figure: vision China
The Belgian poet Emil Verhalen wrote in “City”: “Every road goes to the city.” Metaphorically, the city is the center of power and wealth in this era.
When driving along the highway to the city, we will sigh: “Every road goes to the toll booth.”
Starting at 0:00 on May 6, the expressway ushered in the day of toll collection again, and the Humen Bridge was excited by “vortex vibration”.
It is expected that the cost of domestic and export commodities will increase to varying degrees after high-speed restoration of tolls. Therefore, many people miss the high-speed free, and ask: Why can’t the freeway always be free?
The views economists usually give are: Free is the most expensive . Free will lead to inefficiency and dissipation of rental value. Some economists pointed out: High-speed free is “robbing the poor and saving the rich” .
Looking back on May 1st of last year, car riders and tourists congested on the high-speed road may be deeply touched by economists. Free high-speed is good, but it is not a problem to watch the sunrise on the road.
However, the data shows that high speeds in Europe and the United States are basically free, 90% of high speeds in the United States are free, and 70% of the world’s toll roads are in China.
Are high-speed highways in the United States often congested due to free traffic? Is the free model in Europe and America good, or the charging model in China? Should highway users pay, or public payments?
This article explores highway toll issues and the efficiency of public goods from the perspective of economic principles.
First, the higher the price, the betterMost efficient
Arthur Cecil Pigou, the British economist and Marshall’s proud student, discussed this issue first.
Pigu published the famous “Welfare Economics” in 1920. In the first edition of this book, an example of “two roads” was analyzed. At that time, the highway (the world ’s first highway from Cologne to Bonn, Germany It was completed in 1932) .
He described that there are two free roads to a city: one good road and one bad road. The good road surface is narrow but the poor road surface is wide.
At the beginning, most cars chose to walk on roads with good faces. As a result, good roads were congested, and poor roads were sparsely populated; but when the congestion of good roads reached a certain level, more and more cars would divert to poor roads In the end, the speeds of the good road and the poor road are the same, reaching the equilibrium point.
From an economic point of view, the speed of a good road and a poor road mean that the resources of the good road are wasted, and the value of the good road above the poor road completely disappears, that is, the rental value dissipates.
What does Pigou mean by this?
When traveling at high speeds for free, car owners usually give priority to high-speed travel as described by Pigou. We now have navigation, the information is more sufficient, we can query the road congestion as soon as possible, and the navigation will also give the road selection prompt.
Many times, we will find that in areas with high traffic pressure, whether you choose a highway or a normal highway, the time spent on the road may be about the same.
Many people feel that free high-speed is no longer high-speed. This is what Pigou would like to say, and the rental value of Good Road is lost (high-speed efficiency) .
How to solve Pigou?
In order not to waste the resources of good roads, Pigou believes that if the government collects taxes on good roads, some vehicles will shift from good roads to poor roads in order to avoid tax collection, so that the efficiency of good roads can be exerted. The total benefits will increase.
Pigu ’s conclusion is equivalent to supporting highway tolls, except that the main toll collector is the government, which means tax collection.
Pigu ’s tax solution, with China ’s high-speedThe appearance is very similar. Today, most of China’s high-speed construction and operation entities are state-owned enterprises or state-owned holding companies. China’s high-speed toll collection is similar to the government taxation advocated by Pigou.
In 1924, Frank H. Knight, the founder of the Chicago School of America, published a famous paper “Some Fallacy in the Interpretation of Social Costs.” In his article, Knight criticized Pigou’s method of using government taxes.
Pigou defines Good Road as a public property, but does not advocate a free policy, hoping to increase efficiency through taxation. Knight supports Pigou’s analysis of the loss of good road efficiency, but disagrees with government taxation.
What is Knight ’s solution?
Knight believes that government intervention is wrong. The best way is to confirm the private property rights of the road, and the road owner will collect tolls, so that some cars will be diverted to the bad roads, and the efficiency of good roads will be improved.
Knight argued in the article: “In the case of private possession and development of roads, the development of things will be very different. In fact, the social function of ownership is precisely to prevent such overuse of good roads.” < / p>
Nate actually suggested to use the market approach to solve the problem. The price mechanism is used to regulate the supply, and the “highest price gets the most”. Each car owner will evaluate whether it is cost-effective to pay tolls based on his own situation, such as whether he is in a hurry, fuel consumption, or the possible cost of car losses due to poor roads, so as to make a choice to maximize profits.
So, both Knight and Pigou believe that “paying” can improve the efficiency of traffic, but the two methods are different. The former uses a market mechanism and the latter uses a government mechanism.
Pigou did not refute Knight ’s criticism, but deleted this example from the book during the second publication.
Later, the founder of property rights theory, Ronald Coase, also made a claim similar to Knight’s, and economist Stigler summarized it as “Coase’s law”, that is, whoever uses it best belongs to it. For car owners willing to pay tolls, highways can bring him the most utility.
The essence of whether high-speed charges are actually a question of how scarce resources are allocated. In the example of good roads and poor roads, Pigou assumes that good roads are narrow, that is, they are scarce. The highway is also a scarce product.
In the history of mankind, various methods have been used to compete for rare supplies, which generally include jungle rules, national rules, and market mechanisms. The law of the jungle is the most common, such as plundering resources, land, and population through violence and war. This way brings huge