Who Owns Taxi Licences?
Executive Summary • Taxi regulation, which limits the number of available cabs and the price owners and/or operators can charge in a jurisdiction, is a rare act of government wherein the regulators control the price and quantity of the service supplied to the market rather than just the quality and safety. • Taxi regulation has some unusual effects on the market. Limiting the number of taxis creates the possibility of monopoly rents. For the licence holders, it means that licences can be leased out for significant fees and that they have a government-created, above-market tradable value of their own. • One of the cornerstone conventions of Western democracy is that governments are expected to govern with the informed consent of their people. In the case of taxi regulation, it is difficult for voters to understand the regulator’s activities without understanding what the regulator actually does and what secondary effects result, including the creation of monopoly rents. • Because the po
