That very long time since I have not done a post about the economic dimensions that can be addressed in the films, these sometimes explicitly but more often in a completely unconscious in the minds of writers, only my twisted mind that perhaps the idea of the highlight ...
[Some readers believe so strongly that it is mainly due to the fact that there is only me that this piece! But then, what a paradox because, reader, if you arrived at this point is that you read me and So you're interested!]
I recently reviewed one of the masterpieces of fantasy film, "Fly" in the version directed by David Cronenberg, Jeff Goldblum, a remake of a classic the 50s just as good, and a number of economic considerations mentioned in the movie entertained me. This is the subject of this post.
The story is simple enough to summarize in a few words: a brilliant inventor, a physicist by profession, is developing a system to teleport the first inert material, then, stumbling on the problem Teleportation of living creatures, is the solution, the experiments on himself, causing an end. As the film begins, the scientific dialogue with science journalist played by Geena Davis and told him the next thing to persuade her to write a book that recounts his discovery
"This is a book about the invention put an end to all the concepts on transport, the limits of time and space. "
This is where I bisque.
In fact, this idea reflects the common sense that we all have and that is to consider that the problem of transporting goods or passengers is primarily a distance problem. If the distance was abolished by means of a device such as teleportation, then more transportation problem and a transportation cost zero or almost insignificant.
In fact, this idea reflects the common sense that we all have and that is to consider that the problem of transporting goods or passengers is primarily a distance problem. If the distance was abolished by means of a device such as teleportation, then more transportation problem and a transportation cost zero or almost insignificant.
This would sound the death knell it a discipline that is dear to me, transport economics, reduced to be included in the pantheon of the history of thought in dusty oblivion reserved for ideas that have no more interest, like for example the Marxist theory of value or of the overwhelming majority of the works of Bernard Henry-Levy ?
Precisely, nothing is less true if we look at how the problem of transport, including individuals, is discussed in modern economic theory.
Things can be understood intuitively: the transportation problem is not just a distance problem consisting of going from point A to point B is also a problem of infrastructure capacity that can convey things or beings. This capacity problem is not seen by the film, which has other cats, or rather fly, whipping and there is not its essential purpose.
However, this is a central point. Draw the thread linked to the revolutionary discovery of Brundle, the unfortunate inventor of teleportation played by Goldblum. Imagine that his device becomes completely reliable, and pervasive as to render obsolete all transport infrastructure, land, sea, air, etc.. Brundle system requires access to a person at a TelePod located in A, the transfer of that person to another TelePod located in B. The crucial point is that it is possible to teleport an object or be living at the same time is also the source of the curse of our great inventor, the procedure for a few seconds and the total journey time is not related to the distance between A and B, since is precisely teleportation.
The fact remains that the system is a bottleneck. Difficult to consider building as many TelePod (these are expensive for a simple economic point of view) that people wishing to move, and therefore, the system has a capacity limit. For example, this limit could be, for example, 60 trips per hour per TelePod, assuming the time of entry and exit total equal to one minute.
Now, who said said capacity limit potential congestion, ie the possibility of transport costs not related to the distance increase with travel demand at a given time and depending on the stock travel remaining to sell when I appear before the TelePod. Indeed, congestion is a dynamic phenomenon, which implies a mechanism for queue, and therefore travel time when m (or cost if I assume negligible financial costs of traveling in a first step) increases due to the total travel remaining to be sold and the proceeds of the travel demand for the moments m-1, m -2, etc., above, and demand instant m. The problem will be precisely that it is possible to transfer a person per minute ...
This way of conceiving the problem of displacement and the formation of congestion dynamically was proposed by William Vickrey and formalized in 1969 by Richard Arnott, André de Palma and Robin Lindsey in the late 80's in what is now the bottleneck models ("bottleneck models"). It must be said that these models, inspired by physics and operations research, constituted a revolution in the field of urban economics and transport economics.
Initially, these models seek to explain the formation of congestion in commuting between home and work in urban areas, particularly the phenomena of peak morning and evening. In the simplest theoretical configuration, while everyone wants to get to the same place at one time, drivers are assumed homogeneous, all located in one place, and before going through the same route to arrive for example in the city center where are all the jobs. This route has a certain flow capacity by time period, eg 100 vehicles per minute. Motorists must choose just when to leave their homes knowing that they must arrive at a precise moment, the same for all, and the cost of transport is established that the time they spend in the bottleneck but also the opportunity cost time due to the fact that they may arrive early or late in their workplace. So there's a real tradeoff for users: either I leave early, I spend easily the neck because there are not many people, but I get ahead. Either I'm leaving very late, when there are more people, I suffered for lost time in the slug, and I might as well be late.
Initially, these models seek to explain the formation of congestion in commuting between home and work in urban areas, particularly the phenomena of peak morning and evening. In the simplest theoretical configuration, while everyone wants to get to the same place at one time, drivers are assumed homogeneous, all located in one place, and before going through the same route to arrive for example in the city center where are all the jobs. This route has a certain flow capacity by time period, eg 100 vehicles per minute. Motorists must choose just when to leave their homes knowing that they must arrive at a precise moment, the same for all, and the cost of transport is established that the time they spend in the bottleneck but also the opportunity cost time due to the fact that they may arrive early or late in their workplace. So there's a real tradeoff for users: either I leave early, I spend easily the neck because there are not many people, but I get ahead. Either I'm leaving very late, when there are more people, I suffered for lost time in the slug, and I might as well be late.
Congestion well formed dynamically: as the instantaneous demand is less than or equal to the capacity of the neck, the waiting time (or portion of the neck) is zero. However, once the demand becomes instant exceeds capacity, congestion starts to build vehicles and accumulate in a queue, and it becomes increasingly come to move along the neck. Then, the number of instantaneous downward departures, and congestion ultimately resolves. The rule within the neck is of course a first-come-first served basis.
The chart below, taken from the excellent book by Ken Small and Eric Verhoef on the economy of urban transport, the model and illustrates the formation of congestion:
Source: Small and Verhoef (2007), The Economics of Urban Transportation Routledge.
In this graph, the value of N (t) represents the difference between the total capacity over time (the dotted line) and the combined demand from the moment the number of departures is greater than the capacity flow of the road (solid curve). The horizontal value T (t) is the time spent in the neck of a user starting at t.
It is even possible to further simplify the model, assuming that a vehicle that enters the mouth goes immediately if the capacity does the stock remains above application to sell in t, since it is not important really.
few years ago (sorry, I'll still talk to me like the last post), I realized with some colleagues a series of experimental studies on this model (a reference here), although excessively simplified experience in a laboratory, but the results were quite enlightening. Even with a small number of players in this game bottleneck, congestion is observed consistently, which means that participants are unable to coordinate well enough to solve the congestion problem, for example, player 1 starting at time 1, the player 2to hour 2, etc., which would minimize the total cost of transportation, and efficiency would be 100%. In our experiments, the average efficiency of around 60%, which is related to congestion. Moreover, the results observed in the laboratory are fairly close to the theoretical predictions from the model of bottleneck.
few years ago (sorry, I'll still talk to me like the last post), I realized with some colleagues a series of experimental studies on this model (a reference here), although excessively simplified experience in a laboratory, but the results were quite enlightening. Even with a small number of players in this game bottleneck, congestion is observed consistently, which means that participants are unable to coordinate well enough to solve the congestion problem, for example, player 1 starting at time 1, the player 2to hour 2, etc., which would minimize the total cost of transportation, and efficiency would be 100%. In our experiments, the average efficiency of around 60%, which is related to congestion. Moreover, the results observed in the laboratory are fairly close to the theoretical predictions from the model of bottleneck.
More recently, the American Economic Review published an experimental study of Daniel, Gish and Rapoport in 2009 on a more sophisticated version of this bottleneck model, based on the idea of bottlenecks that fit together in a big bottleneck (to put it simply, two small roads that connect to a highway). The authors test the impact of increasing the capacity of a small road upstream, all things being equal, the cost of transport. They observe in the laboratory a form of Braess paradox (a phenomenon I wrote about here ), which causes the increase in capacity leads to so-cons intuitive an increase in overall costs of displacement.
Returning to Cronenberg film, and to link with what has been said, even with the generalized teleportation, it is not clear that increasing the capacity TelePod would solve the problem permanently travel costs if a phenomenon of Braess type occurs (for that to happen, just that the capacity increase is not too strong). Like what a technological innovation, even revolutionary, do not sound the end of our thinking in the field of transport economics, on the contrary, it stimulates them, no doubt.
I came to the conclusion that the film would Fly a great introduction to a course of modern transport economics, however, assuming that most students did not make lunch or enjoy After the screening - the film is quite gory at times anyway - otherwise, even with talent, it will be difficult to ask an intellectual effort ...
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