Transport Economics

About this subject

• What you'll learn

  At the completion of this subject students will:

  1. Appreciate the derived nature of the demand for transport
  2. Be able to use a software package - widely applied in industry - to forecast the future movement of economic variables that will have an impact on the future demand for a transport facility or service
  3. Be able to use a software package to estimate both a time series and a regression model of the demand for a particular transport mode
  4. Be able to interpret various empirically derived demand elasticities and to understand how such elasticities can be used for decision-making and policy purposes. understand the peculiarities of transport cost behaviour and the difficulties such behaviour poses for the pricing of transport services and facilities
  5. Understand the peculiarities of transport cost behaviour and the difficulties such behaviour poses for the pricing of transport services and facilities be able to construct as well as employ the classical break-even model to determine the break-even level of use of a transport service or facility
  6. Be able to empirically measure operating leverage (within the context of a break-even model of a privately owned transport operation) and to use this measure to provide advice to management on the sensitivity of profits to the operation’s activity level of use
  7. Be competent in the application of financial mathematics formulae to evaluate the costs and benefits of a transport investment from both a private and a social perspective
  8. Be able to use a software package to conduct transport and logistics related project evaluations
  9. Be conversant with the various spillover effects associated with the use of various transport modes and facilities and the implications these have for the capacity of the market mechanism to allocate resources efficiently to and within the transport sector
  10. Have a sound understanding of why governments continue to intervene as well as regulate some areas of the transport industry whilst in other sectors of this industry, the government has moved toward de-regulation and privatisation.

• Topics covered

• Description

• Assessments

• Textbooks

• About RMIT University

Entry requirements

Prior study

To help set you up for success before you start this subject, we suggest completing or having equivalent knowledge in:

• USA-ECO11-Principles of Economics

Others

or equivalent first-year university economics, statistics and calculus

Additional requirements

No additional requirements

Study load

0.125 EFTSL

This is in the range of 10 to 12 hours of study each week.

Equivalent full time study load (EFTSL) is one way to calculate your study load. One (1.0) EFTSL is equivalent to a full-time study load for one year.

Find out more information on Commonwealth Loans to understand what this means to your eligibility for financial support.