A first theme in the research relates to the optimal design of economic instruments that aim at increasing efficiency in transport markets. These include pricing, infrastructure investments and information provision to travelers. As first-best policies are often not feasible in reality, also second-best policies are defined and benchmarked against the corresponding first-best policies.

A second research focus is the integration of travel-related short-, medium- and long-run decisions in a coherent modeling framework, from a theoretical as well as an empirical perspective. At the core is the explicit modeling of the linkage between short-run decisions on day- specific travel alternatives, medium-run decisions on travel routines, and long-run decisions on housing and work locations, or car ownership. First results show that models taking into account these inter-temporal interdependencies may yield substantially different results than models that ignore them.

Another dominant research theme is the derivation of monetary valuations of travel attributes, which constitute an essential input for cost-benefit analyses of transport policies. Well-known examples are the valuations attached to reductions of travel time and schedule delays and to improvements in reliability and comfort. These can be derived either from stated preference (SP) data that are collected in hypothetical choice experiments or from revealed preference (RP) data that are collected in real-life experiments. The data are analyzed using advanced discrete choice modeling techniques.