• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.209-231
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• 2007

This paper suggested an approach to characterize travel choice behaviors using the implicit price instead of the indirect utility. The choice criterion to compare the implicit prices of available trip options was developed from the utility maximization problem of a trip maker which is supposed to choose the best option from the available ones differentiated by only by the quantitative attributes such as travel cost and time but also by qualitative attributes such as comfort and safety. The utility maximization problem is constructed under household production theory, and is incorporated with a special kind of joint homogeneous production functions. The implicit price of a certain trip option is the sum of the monetary price and the multiple of travel time and the value-of-travel-time, and the value-of-travel-time refers to the portion of wage, which can be assignable to the trip-making activity. This choice criterion is statistically identifiable, and behaviorally plausible. Moreover, this criterion has the expression simpler than the indirect utility, and therefore could be an effective target of the statistical estimation for travel choice behaviors.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.159-173
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• 2004

Using a generalized translog multiproduct cost function model, this paper examines economies of scale and scope in the vertically-integrated Korean railway industry. The paper then conceptualizes that the Korea National Railroad (KNR) produces four outputs (passenger-kilometers, ton-kilometers of freight, average length of passenger trips, and average length of freight haul) using three input factors(labor, fuel and maintenance, and rolling stock and capital). Using time series data collected from the KNR's annual records for the years from 1977 to 2002, the simultaneous equation system consisting of a cost function and two input share equatins is estimated with the Zellner's iterative seemingly unrelated regression. The findings show that the cost function corresponding to a non-Cobb-Douglas, non-homothetic, and non-homogeneous production technology adequately represents the KNR's cost structure. On the other hand, the Korean railway industry experiences sizeable overall scale economies, which result from substantial product-specific scale economies associated with passenger-kilometers and freight ton-kilometers and from scope economies associated with their joint production. In addition, the magnitude of economies of scope is influenced largely by the ratio of passenger trips, and has increased over time as the former has increased while the latter has decreased.