Xie Zuoshi: Congestion In Spring Festival Is Due To The Two Element Structure Of Urban And Rural Areas.

It was another spring festival. What did the government do for the Spring Festival transportation this year? Spring Festival syndrome It happened as usual. The spring transport syndrome refers to the associated phenomenon of long queues, scaly Party rallies and railway station chaos.

The essence of spring transport syndrome is shortage. When prices are low, there will be shortages, and there will be queuing purchases and associated phenomena. Theoretically, as long as prices are mentioned at an adequate height, queuing purchases and associated shortages will disappear.

But spring festival transportation Traffic jam It's not a simple one. Price phenomenon 。 Generally speaking, the price will increase and the demand will drop, and the supply will increase. Through the movement of demand and supply, price increase will eliminate queuing purchase and its associated shortage. The final effect of raising prices to eliminate shortages depends on the nature of demand and supply: first, the price elasticity of demand and supply; and two, whether the demand is smooth and stable in time. There is no doubt that spring transportation is very different from the general price phenomenon in these two aspects.

The price elasticity of demand for spring transport is low. It is not simply a cultural and custom issue like going home for the new year. Those migrant workers friends, their children in the rural areas, that is their hearts; their parents in the rural areas, that is their heart care. To raise prices to a significant reduction in demand, that would be a great height. Let them disperse their time to go home? Great pressure on employment, hard work, and people waiting for jobs outside the factory gate. Not to mention that they can not get home leave, even if they can go home, do they dare to take this vacation and dare to go back to this home? Those college friends, they have no meat in their hometown, but a holiday school will not let them live in school, and they will not go home.

Although the price increase can not effectively reduce the demand, but if a small increase in price can effectively increase the supply, it can still eliminate the shortage of queuing purchase and related links by raising prices. Unfortunately, the price elasticity of spring transport is also low. The supply of passenger transport capacity needs a large amount of special fixed investment, which determines that the passenger transport capacity is near fixed in the short term. Because the demand for passenger transport capacity presents the characteristics of the short term huge explosion during the Spring Festival period, at a price not too high, it is necessary to balance the demand and supply without queuing buying spring transport syndrome. In the long run, there will be excess capacity, and if the supply and demand balance is long in the long run, then it is very difficult for Spring Festival transportation to have no syndrome of Spring Festival during the Spring Festival. Unless a substantial increase in the price of the Spring Festival transport is high enough to substantially reduce the demand for spring transport (although the demand for spring transport is not flexible, as long as the price is high enough, the demand will always decrease substantially), or substantially increase the supply of capacity, so that the income of the Spring Festival transport is enough to make up for the loss of the idle capacity of the transport enterprises and not to the extent of loss.

When supply is inelastic and demand is not smooth and stable in time, the effective solution is demand peak and low demand price. We make such differential pricing in the use of peak electricity and low electricity consumption. But this requires elasticity of demand. The problem is that demand for spring transport is not flexible enough to raise prices to a sufficient height, so that supply and demand can not be balanced.

It can not be denied: as long as there are queuing purchase and non price competition exists, there will be rent dissipation; from a social point of view, waste has taken place. This is an introductory course in price theory. However, this is not only a question of how to make big cakes, but also how to cut the distribution of cakes. If there is no transaction cost, then part of the proceeds from the beneficiary can be transferred to the injured party to raise the price, so that everyone can benefit and not waste, so as to achieve Kaldor improvement. The problem is that transaction costs exist, and such compensation is almost impossible. Now, do we need to raise prices to eliminate wastage? To be honest, I don't think economics can give an answer in this case. The final outcome must be determined by the interests of all parties.

The result of the game is self-evident. But don't assume that the price is lower than the equilibrium price of supply and demand, and passengers can get all the difference. Prices are not just visible coupon prices. Queuing and trampling are all prices. Because of the different time cost of people, the ability to resist trodding and trampling is not the same, so the evaluation of queuing and stampede is different. Therefore, the pricing issue is always a distribution problem. Most people are willing to choose low fares and wait in line and stampede. On the one hand, because they do not mention enough height, they have to pay higher nominal price, while queuing and trampling can not improve much. On the other hand, most of them are low income people, and the time value is not high, so they are willing to use time to change their fares.

This has also brought about the merits and demerits of the scalpers. As Mr. Xue Zhaofeng pointed out, the difference between the face price and the actual balance between supply and demand has created the scalpers. "Not the scalpers first bought the tickets, then they could add the price as they wished, and then sold them to passengers, thereby increasing the burden on the passengers. Instead, the passengers had to compete for the train tickets so that the actual fares of the train tickets were much higher than the face price, which created the survival space for the scalpers. The existence of the cattle party did not impose additional burden on passengers. The cattle party has saved time for those who have high time value. As long as the spread exists, all kinds of strategies to fight scalpers, including real name tickets, are doomed.

It is true that some companies may even buy tickets from the scalpers, even if they do not sell seats at the window. But this is a problem that enterprises do not seek to maximize profits, not the problem of scalpers. The problem of congestion in Spring Festival is not a simple price problem, but a deep urban and rural two element structure problem. The household registration system is not canceled, children can not learn in cities, migrant workers can not afford to buy in cities, can not afford to rent houses, can not settle down, spring transport syndrome has basically disappeared.

There is an interesting topic: collective action theory says that because of the large number of consumers and free riders, the result is that a few producers seize the trade protection of most consumers. But why did the Spring Festival in China appear to be contrary to theoretical expectations?