This week, we’re joined by UC Berkeley PhD candidate Matthew Tarduno, who talks to us about his paper comparing congestion and economic impacts of ride hailing companies Uber and Lyft before and after the cessation of service in Austin, Texas. We talk about potentially beneficial congestion policies and how the paper might apply to some cities and not others.
For those of you who prefer to use your eyes rather than your ears, there’s a partial transcript below the audio player (a full transcript is here):
Here’s the partial transcript:
Jeff Wood: So you wrote a paper entitled “The Congestion Costs of Lyft and Uber” in the Journal of Urban Economics. I’m curious what the impetus was. I mean, you kind of explained a little bit, but what the impetus was for thinking specifically as it pertains to ride hailing.
An economic benefit to britain? there s no question immigration benefits migrants. absolutely none. and probably the world as a whole. but if you are trying to tell ordinary british people that having a large inflow will necessarily benefit them i think the evidence is very much against saying that that s a clear answer. it depends very much on who the immigrants are, what skills they have, how successful they are economically, what sort of contributions they make, how long they stay. it really does depend very much on the nature of the immigration. and of course you have to be realistic. if you have a very large net immigrant flow in a small and densely pop plated country like the uk, it requires very substantial costs to accommodate. you have to build infrastructure, hospital, roads, schools. you have to build morehouses. other kiz the congestion costs become very significant. unfortunately we re not very good at doing any of those
Infrastructure, hospitals, roads, schools. you have to build more houses. otherwise the congestion costs become significant. we re not very good at doing any of those things. what do you make of the arts made in the united states where there are economists and scholars who say when you look at the effect of migration from mexico on low income americans, it s not clear it s beneficial. it probably hurts them. these are the same people who compete for the same low wage. you have to build this capacity. are they right? is donald trump right? some of the propositions he s putting forward seem to be sort of basically mad. if you have a large number of people in the country you can t throw them out. economists are debating these questions. they are really big arguments