Passenger transport is a key sector of the economy, and its sustainability depends on achieving the greatest possible efficiency, avoiding problems of congestion or underuse of infrastructures, and reducing the sector’s environmental impact. Knowing the elasticities of demand is critical to achieving these objectives, estimating the intensity of transport demand, and predicting the effect of different policies on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This research proposes a relatively simple model for estimating and predicting the elasticity of demand for different modes of transport at the route level. This model could be used by companies and public management to obtain a vision of the different analysed routes and the pressure of their demand, as well as a relative perspective of each of them. Such a model is used to estimate the price and income demand elasticities of passenger transport modes in domestic routes in the United States (2003–2019), where there is competition between road, rail, and air transport. Series of passenger numbers, fares, and budget shares are reconstructed from the available data. A Rotterdam demand model (RDM) is estimated using a seemingly unrelated regression method (SUR). The estimated income elasticities imply that demand for road transport increases somewhat more proportionally than the increase in income, somewhat less than proportionally for air transport, and with very low proportionality for rail transport. This indicates the need to target investment and service improvement efforts, as well as technological solutions, according to this difference in demand pressures. Finally, the demand response of the three modes of transport to price increases is inelastic, and there is little or no pass-through from one mode to another. This implies that fiscal or carbon pricing actions could have a very limited impact and high social costs. Again, strategies based on investments in technological progress, infrastructure development, and normative interventions could be more effective.

We pose the estimation and predictability of stock market performance. Three cases are taken: US, Japan, Germany, the monthly index of the value of realized investment in stocks, prices plus the value of dividend payments (OECD data). Once deflated and trend removed, harmonic analysis is applied. The series are taken with and without the periods with evidence of exogenous shocks. The series are erratic and the random walk hypothesis is reasonably falsified. The estimation reveals relevant hidden periodicities, which approximate stock value movements. From July 2008 onwards, it is successfully analyzed whether the subsequent fall in share value would have been predictable. Again, the data are irregular and scattered, but the sum of the first five harmonics in relevance anticipates the fall in stock market values that followed.

La razón moderna busca la certeza absoluta o fundamento incondicionado de la verdad. Se contrapone explícitamente con todo lo anterior, afirmando un inicio totalmente nuevo. Además, para los objetivos propuestos, desarrolla desde el sujeto el método, que debe ser apodíctico y universal. En esa búsqueda, sentida como ascesis, las tres formas propuestas de incondicionalidad, evidencia y realismo fracasan relativamente. Se analizan los procesos en los que se forman estos resultados, ese avance parcial. Estudio que desvela mucho de la modernidad, de su fundamentación matemática y de los límites que la determinan. Desde lo anterior, se alcanza una doble conclusión acerca de la razón moderna: precisa de la presencia del contenido empírico, y sus procesos son complejos y parciales. La imaginación es necesaria en las formas de comprender y transformar el mundo. Por una parte, la razón moderna necesita reconocer a la persona histórica y real, pues ¿quién es el sujeto si no es la persona? Por la otra, irredenta, continuará buscando la fundamentación inconmovible.

These data support the research article: 'The elasticities of passenger transport demand in the Northeast Corridor', Escanuela Romana, I. (2019) [1]. The necessary data were collected in order to be able to estimate a demand model for the different modes of transport between cities in the Northeast Corridor (NEC) of the United States. The data set includes the number of passengers, transport prices, its share within the budget of consumer expenses, for each one of the relevant passenger transportation modes: train, aeroplane, car and coach. The lack of official statistics on the number of passengers and road transport prices is confronted by reconstructing the series from the NEC freeway traffic meters. Such series shall, therefore allow us to estimate a multi-equational demand model in which the conditions of the rational consumer may be added and tested. Without this knowledge, it would not be possible to understand the elasticities and consider the most suitable maximising business strategies and public policies for the wellbeing of consumers.