In this paper, we investigate the social resource allocation in an emerging mobility system consisting of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) using mechanism design. CAVs provide the most intriguing opportunity for enabling travelers to monitor mobility system conditions efficiently and make better decisions. However, this new reality will influence travelers' tendency-of-travel and might give rise to rebound effects, e.g., increased-vehicle-miles traveled. To tackle this phenomenon, we propose a mechanism design formulation that provides an efficient social resource allocation of travel time for all travelers. Our focus is on the socio-technical aspect of the problem, i.e., by designing appropriate socio-economic incentives, we seek to prevent potential rebound effects. In particular, we propose an economically inspired mechanism to influence the impact of the travelers' decision-making on the well-being of an emerging mobility system.

Social Resource Allocation in a Mobility System with Connected and Automated Vehicles: A Mechanism Design Problem

The generation of construction and demolition waste (CDW) is a problem for societies aspiring to sustainability. In this regard, governments have the responsibility to support the CDW recycling through subsidies. However, the information asymmetry, as well as the “dynamic nature” of the CDW recycling market, results in a number of barriers for the government to promote CDW recycling. In this paper, we establish a mathematical model that includes the government and the recycling enterprise in the presence of dual information asymmetry including the unknown recycling technology level and unobservable recycling efforts in one-stage and two-stage cooperation. Using the incentive theory, the static and dynamic optimal recycling incentive contracts of the government were designed, and the optimal decisions of the recycler were identified. A numerical simulation revealed that by designing reasonable contracts, the government can encourage the recycler to report the true technical level and achieve information screening. Furthermore, the subsidy of the high-tech recycler remained unchanged under different circumstances. However, the subsidy of the low-tech recycler was closely related to the probability of misreporting and the proportion of technology types. This finding suggests that the government and recycler are inclined towards long-term dynamic cooperation.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/10/2943/pdf

Dynamic Incentive Mechanism Design for Recycling Construction and Demolition Waste under Dual Information Asymmetry

Competitive tendering and deregulation in the British bus

Are rewards or penalties more effective in influencing user behavior? This work compares the effectiveness of subsidies and tolls in incentivizing users in congestion games. The predominantly studied method of influencing user behavior in network routing problems is to institute taxes which alter users' observed costs in a manner that causes their self-interested choices to more closely align with a system-level objective. Another feasible method to accomplish the same goal is to subsidize the users' actions that are preferable from a system-level perspective. We show that, when users behave similarly and predictably, subsidies offer comparable performance guarantees to tolls while requiring smaller monetary transactions with users; however, in the presence of unknown player heterogeneity, subsidies fail to offer the same performance as tolls. We further investigate these relationships in affine congestion games, deriving explicit performance bounds under optimal tolls and subsidies with and without user heterogeneity; we show that the differences in performance can be significant.

Carrots or Sticks? The Effectiveness of Subsidies and Tolls in Congestion Games

The research in this article relates to an evaluation system for the implementation of lines in a public passenger transport system as a public service obligation. The purpose of this research is to present the methodology for the performance evaluation of a public passenger transport system that serves the public transport authority as a tool for making further decisions. The procedures first refer to the experimental determination of the criteria and then perform the first evaluation in the form of the value of the objective function. This is followed by multi-stage linear regression and optimization procedures that give the relation between the dependent variable ( Y ) and the independent variables ( X , ) that is, the criteria. Optimization is carried out in the coefficients ( β ), which are excluded from the optimization procedures in the case of the calculated statistical degree of insignificance. This research also shows procedures for changing the mathematical form of the criteria records and determining the impact on the final result of optimizations.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/12/3294/pdf

Evaluation System for the Implementation of Public Passenger Transport as a Public Service Obligation

Large public transport subsidies necessitated by operating deficits have become a heavy financial burden on some local governments. However, the present subsidy scheme lacks incentives to encourage bus operators to reduce deficits to lessen subsidies. In order to motivate bus operators to exert their roles in reducing these subsidies to ensure sustainable finance, this paper designs an incentive subsidy scheme based on the Laffont–Tirole model. This scheme is designed to motivate bus operators to endeavor to reduce deficits so as to obtain a premium, thus minimizing the total amount of subsidies and maximizing social benefit. The case of the bus network in Kumamoto, Japan, shows how, with this subsidy scheme, bus operators can play roles in lessening subsidies, allowing a win-win situation for both bus operators and the local government, and maximizing social benefit to realize the sustainability of the city. Finally, findings of our sensitivity analysis with imperfect information suggest that the length of bus lines in a network should be shortened in order to avoid cost waste to lessen subsidies.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/6/1740/pdf

Meichen Yu

Papers

Mechanism Design for an Incentive Subsidy Scheme for Bus Transport