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  5. Efficiency and Equity Impacts of Urban Transportation Policies with Equilibrium Sorting

American Economic Review

ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)

Efficiency and Equity Impacts of Urban Transportation Policies with Equilibrium Sorting

  • Panle Jia Barwick
  • Shanjun Li
  • Andrew Waxman
  • Jing Wu
  • Tianli Xia
American Economic Review (Forthcoming)

Abstract

We estimate an equilibrium sorting model of housing location and commuting mode choice with endogenous traffic congestion to evaluate urban transportation policies. Leveraging fine-scale data from travel diaries and housing transactions identifying residents’ home and work locations, we recover rich preference heterogeneity over both travel mode and residential location decisions. While different policies produce the same congestion reduction, their impacts on social welfare differ drastically. In addition, sorting undermines the congestion reduction under driving restrictions and subway expansion but strengthens it under congestion pricing. The combination of congestion pricing and subway expansion delivers the greatest congestion relief and efficiency gains.

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