Digital Commons Network^™

Density Of Demand And The Consumer Benefit From Uber, Matthew H. Shapiro

Research Collection School Of Economics

Uber has attracted the attention of economists and policy makers for its innovations in the taxicab market and its potential for significant consumer welfare gains. The size of this gain depends in part on whether these innovations permit transactions previously costly or infeasible. Using New York City — the largest taxi market in the country — as its context, this paper estimates the level of any technological advantage Uber has over hail taxis in matching to consumers. I combine publicly available transportation data with data scraped from Uber and traffic cameras to estimate a model of the demand for transportation …

Producer Services: An Engine For High-Wage Job Growth, Spencer Cook, Eric Thompson

Business in Nebraska

Producer services providers are firms that sell services primarily to the business community rather than to individuals and households. Many producer services businesses are classified in the Professional, Scientific, and Technical Service (PSTS) industry. Accounting firms, consultants, and computer design services are prominent examples of PSTS businesses that are worth studying for three reasons:

1. SUPPORT OF OTHER INDUSTRIES: PSTS industries supply the broader business community, making them a critical segment of the economy.

2. RAPID HIGH WAGE JOB GROWTH: Many PSTS industries are rapidly growing and pay high wages. The producer services sector, in fact, is the principal source …

Traffic Scorecard In Mountain West Cities, Kelliann Beavers, Eshaan Vakil, Katie M. Gilbertson, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Transportation & Infrastructure

This fact sheet presents congestion and mobility trends in 14 Mountain West cities as compiled by INRIX Research and author Trevor Reed, in the Global Traffic Scorecard, March 2020. The INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard examines the impact of vehicle travel on 975 congested cities in the world; this fact sheet focuses on the Mountain West, providing insight on the ranking and impacts of congestion. This fact sheet also supplements INRIX’s scorecard with population data from the U.S. Census Bureau to provide context for the rankings.

Transportation Affordability In The Mountain West, Saha Salahi, Kelliann Beavers, Elia Del Carmen Solano-Patricio, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Transportation & Infrastructure

This Fact Sheet highlights “The Most and Least Affordable Cities For Public Transit” in the Mountain West. Extracting from Paul Reynolds’ analysis of over 70 transit system across the United States from 2014 to 2015, this fact sheet focuses on data for the 7 municipalities in the Mountain West: Albuquerque, NM; Ogden, UT; Boulder, CO; Phoenix, AZ; Las Vegas, NV, Salt Lake City, UT, and Denver, CO.

Rural Transportation Conference Participants’ Opinions And Concerns Pertaining To Transit For Older Adults, James W. Mjelde, Rebekka M. Dudensing, Geoffrey Battista, Jonathan Brooks, Maria Carrillo, Blane Counsil, Anil Giri, Man-Keun Kim, V. Dimitra Pyrialakou

Applied Economics Faculty Publications

Mobility remains a vital part of the well-being of rural-living, older adults and transportation disadvantaged persons. This study seeks to identify research and policy needs related to rural transit for older people and the transportation disadvantaged. To obtain this goal, the multidisciplinary study team conducted two activities as part of a 2016 rural transportation conference: a survey of conference attendees and open discussion to elicit additional information. Results suggest the attendees felt the need for rural transit for older adults would continue to increase with public and private funding being critical issues. Respondents had similar opinions about challenges and opportunities …

The Nebraska Economy Responds To The Covid-19 Pandemic, Eric Thompson

Business in Nebraska

The Nebraska economy will contract in 2020 but the rate of decline will not be as rapid as nationwide. The economic structure of Nebraska is more focused on production and transportation than the national economy and less focused on hard-hit industries such as hospitality, entertainment, automobile parts and assembly, and oil production. Nebraska also may benefit from a higher quality workforce, which is better able to adapt to changing economic conditions.

Employment will drop by 2.4% in Nebraska in 2020, much less than the national rate of decline. Employment will rebound by 2.0% in 2021 and 1.4% in 2022. With …

Planting The Future: A Green Jobs Remediation For The Greater Dayton Area, Jason R. Utz

Student Papers in Local and Global Regional Economies

Situated in southwest Ohio, Dayton has been a vibrant hub of manufacturing for much of its past. As a host for the corporate headquarters of the National Cash Register (NCR) company and Premier Health Network, a major production facility for General Motors (GM), and Wright Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB), Dayton has been a hotbed of opportunity. But now, with the departure of NCR and GM, Dayton has faced many of the same problems as other semi major cities scattered throughout the Midwest in what is now termed the “rust belt”. Although the city has a modest February unemployment of …

Variability In U.S. Labor Markets: A Presentation To The Workers’ Compensation Research Institute, Michael Horrigan

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Spatial Distribution Of Supply And The Role Of Market Thickness: Theory And Evidence From Ride Sharing, Soheil Ghili, Vineet Kumar

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper studies the e ects of economies of density in transportation markets, focusing on ridesharing. Our theoretical model predicts that (i) economies of density skew the supply of drivers away from less dense regions, (ii) the skew will be more pronounced for smaller platforms, and (iii) rideshare platforms do not nd this skew ecient and thus use prices and wages to mitigate (but not eliminate) it. We then develop a general empirical strategy with simple implementation and limited data requirements to test for spatial skew of supply from demand. Applying our method to ride-level, multi-platform data from New York …

Spatial Distribution Of Supply And The Role Of Market Thickness: Theory And Evidence From Ride Sharing, Soheil Ghili, Vineet Kumar

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper develops a strategy with simple implementation and limited data requirements to identify spatial distortion of supply from demand -or, equivalently, unequal access to supply among regions- in transportation markets. We apply our method to ride-level, multi-platform data from New York City (NYC) and show that for smaller rideshare platforms, supply tends to be disproportionately concentrated in more densely populated areas. We also develop a theoretical model to argue that a smaller platform size, all else being equal, distorts the supply of drivers toward more densely populated areas due to network effects. Motivated by this, we estimate a minimum …