Traffic jams occur even without bottlenecks, simply because of interaction of vehicles on the road. From a driver’s point of view, the instability of the traffic flow arises stochastically. Because the probability of a traffic jam increases with the number of cars on the road, there is a traffic flow breakdown externality. This paper offers a method to calculate this externality for traffic on a circuit. Ignoring the stochastic nature of traffic flow breakdowns results in congestion charges that are too small.

中文翻译：

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幻影交通拥堵的经济影响：交通实验的证据

即使没有瓶颈，交通堵塞也会发生，这仅仅是因为道路上车辆的相互作用。从驾驶员的角度来看，交通流量的不稳定是随机产生的。由于交通拥堵的可能性随着道路上汽车数量的增加而增加，因此存在交通流中断的外部性。本文提供了一种方法来计算电路流量的外部性。忽略流量故障的随机性会导致拥塞费用过小。