Member Article

Business school works with Florida uni

A Newcastle University Business School professor is set to work on research into the impact of traffic congestion charges on behaviour which has received $2m from the United States Federal Government.

Morten Lau, Professor of Economics at Newcastle University Business School, will be part of an international team of researchers which includes members from the University of Central Florida and the University of Copenhagen.

“The idea is to look at toll charges and how they influence traffic behaviour through a variety of experimental methods,” said Professor Lau.

Professor Lau will be involved in field experiments using Florida’s existing toll road system in an attempt to establish peoples’ aversion to differing levels of taxation.

“We will find representative examples of the population and attempt to identify their risk preferences isolating issues such as age, sex, income and geographical location in an attempt to establish the framing effects on the results,” he said.

The University of Central Florida’s engineering department has also built two unique traffic congestion simulators one, located inside an actual car, studies driver behaviour when presented with traffic congestion scenarios and the other is designed to offer insight into issues regarding an entire traffic network.

“It is a very exciting opportunity that will allow the fusion of engineering and economics and although the bulk of the research will take place in the United States, the results should most definitely be of interest to the UK debate,” he explained.

“We will not only be generating academic output in terms of a paper but we will be making strides forward in understanding traffic behaviour and ultimately feeding this in to future government policy, creating best practice on this important and often controversial issue.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .