Full Citation

Title: Three essays on the economics of urban transportation networks

Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis

Publication Year: 2016

ISBN:

ISSN:

DOI:

NSFID:

PMCID:

PMID:

Abstract: This dissertation tackles three applications of economic models to understand urban transportation networks. The first chapter considers the relationship between equity and the transportation system in urban environments where welfare is affected by a host of factors including labor and housing markets as well as local amenities. I examine the effect of transportation policies directed at reducing travel times for commuting on inequality in urban labor markets and consider the choice of city of residence by workers with and without a college degree, using differences in outcomes across these two groups to characterize economic inequality. Behavioral and supply parameters are estimated in a sorting model that controls for the effect on location decisions vis-à-vis wages, rents and amenities. Based on these estimates, policy simulations consider the effect of public transit expansion to lower travel times to work financed by a head tax, congestion pricing or fare increase. Overall the paper documents limited benefits to workers without a college education from the set of proposed policies relative to those with a degree. The second chapter presents joint work which develops a theoretical framework for examining the equilibrium behavior of networks with overlapping externalities which generalizes a series of equilibrium sorting models in housing and social interaction literatures. We present a framework that draws on algorithmic game theory to produce theorems of existence, uniqueness and identification of demand parameters which highlight the importance of the interconnectedness of the network for defining equilibrium outcomes. We end with a series of applications of this framework to empirical examples. The third chapter, also joint work, examines a program that allows solo-drivers to enter carpool lanes upon a payment of a toll, providing the first estimates of commuters’ value of urgency, defined as a discrete willingness-to-pay to avoid failing on-time arrival. Earlier theoretical models that ignore preferences for urgency fail to fit the data and explain important empirical regularities. While the value of time and value of reliability have been commonly used for infrastructure project evaluation, our results show that the value of urgency is the critical parameter for evaluation of congestible infrastructure projects where pricing is possible.

Url: https://search.proquest.com/docview/1827603518/abstract/5C8766BA60EB4957PQ/1?accountid=14586

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Waxman, Andrew, R

Institution: Cornell University

Department:

Advisor:

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

Publisher Location:

Pages: 1-263

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Other

Countries: