The existence of imperfect competition in markets means that prices are higher than production costs (in the economic sense, including a return to capital). As such, business time savings captured in standard Cost Benefit Analysis will underestimate the total benefits to these industries. Data on price-cost margins suggests that a 10% uplift should be added to the value of business time to account for this difference.
This component of wider economic benefits is straightforward to calculate. Standard Transport Economic Efficiency tables should, by default, report the value of business time savings. To calculate the impact of increased output in imperfectly competitive markets, then 10% of this value should be calculated.
