The Ramsey Problem for Congestible Facilities

In recent years, a new set of models drawing on Vickrey [1969] has been developed to analyze the economics of congestible facilities. These models are structural in that they derive the cost function from consumers' time-of-use decisions and the congestion technology. Standard models, in contrast, simply assume the general form of the cost function. We apply the new approach to analyze the Ramsey problem for a congestible facility, and show that the solution generally entails cost inefficiency. Standard models have failed to reveal this result because they treat the cost function as completely determined by technology.