Välfärdseffekten av en konkurrensutsatt tågmarknad

Sammanfattning: The aim of this paper is to describe how to measure welfare effect of the deregulation and increased competition of the public transport by railway in Sweden. The paper also includes a numerical example of how to measure the welfare effect. In our study we use public data from SJ regaring quantity and ticket prices for the period 1996 - 2005. We have used equivalent variation, EV, as the method to measure the welfare effect. We demonstrate how to derive the equation to calculate EV by starting with a Marschallian demand function. As the alternative price path we use the Swedish producers’ price index, PPI. The result of the measurement is that the increased competition in Sweden has had a positive effect on welfare. Since the data is limited, the monetary value of the welfare effect presented in this paper should be interpreted with caution and evaluated further with a more enlarged set of data.