Kuhmo Nectar Conference and Summer School 2007        
Summer School 9-11 July 2007

Urban Transport: Networks and Spatial Interactions

The summer school will focus on urban transport even if also inter-urban trasnportation will be dealt with, especially air transport. Networks and spatial interactions will be treated with reference to land use and transport relations, using both static and dynamic urban equilibrium models. While the conference aims to highlight pricing, financing, regulating and investment issues of practical importance, the summer school aims more systematically to cover alternative approaches to analyzing these issues and their theoretical backgrounds. Besides wider reviews and introductions, the summer school will also offer in-depth investigations into and views of selected topics in the economics of transportation (rather than trying to cover everything).

For those who are interested and request it, the University of Urbino will  grant 2 credits to Summer School participants that have successfully completed all the requirements: ex-ante preparation (reading list), partecipation to classes and final exam.

The topics addressed include:
  • Economic theory of transportation, traffic flow theory
  • Modelling urban transport demand and supply
  • Theory of first best and second best
  • Static and dynamic network models
  • Industrial organization, imperfect competition, regulation in urban transport
  • Urban transport and land use
  • Applied modeling

More general goals of the summer school are:

  • Increase knowledge and understanding of transport economics, and improve on the quality of research in transport economics.
  • Increase international cooperation and mutual understanding by attracting participants from different countries, at different levels of economic development, and from international organizations.
  • Increase understanding between economists and other researchers working on transport, land use, regional science, political science, and institutional analysis.
  • Facilitate the exchange of views, ideas and experiences between theorists, applied researchers, and practitioners, and help them learn from each other in order to narrow the gap between theory and practice.

The teachers at the summer school include top American and European economists and other scientists working on transport and related fields.

The faculty includes :

  • Professor Alex Anas, State University of New York, Buffalo, USA
  • Professor Simon Anderson, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA
  • Professor Richard Arnott, Boston College, USA
  • Professor Jan Brueckner, University of California, Irvine, USA
  • Professor André de Palma, University of Cergy-Pontoise and ENPC, Paris, France, and adpC, Belgium
  • Professor Kenneth Small, University of California, Irvine, USA
  • Professor Erik Verhoef, VU University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

The lectures / teaching classes by scientists with international reputation offer overviews of the selected themes and topics, review and explain central approaches, theories, and models for analyzing the issues, and present the most recent results of theoretical and applied research on the issues.

The sessions also offer in-depth analyses of selected issues. The lectures cover the following topics:

  • Static and dynamic perspectives on urban equilibrium
  • Urban transport: demand and supply modelling
  • Land use and transport interaction
  • Transport and agglomeration
  • Dynamic urban transport networks
  • Principles of first-best and second-best regulation in urban transport
  • Inter-urban transport networks: aviation