Frictions in a Competitive, Regulated Market

职务名称：在竞争激烈、受监管的市场中的竞争。随着Uber和Lyft等新技术进入者的崛起，世界各地的出租车市场都在发生巨大变化。像纽约市这样的地方的出租车市场在某些重要方面类似于一个竞争性市场;特别是存在大量不具有市场支配力的独立参与者。然而，它们也对这种竞争的顺利运作造成障碍或摩擦。其中一些摩擦是监管方面的，比如对进入、定价和所有权的限制。有些是产品交付方式的特点。例如，有一个重要的“匹配摩擦”，这是由于出租车司机对潜在乘客的位置了解有限，导致浪费搜索或等待。本项目开发和估计一个模型，试图衡量这些摩擦，并讨论可能减少这些扭曲的政策。它还考虑了Uber等进入者的影响。PI研究纽约市，因为非常详细的数据，因为该市场的一些有趣的特点。第一部分的项目估计一个动态一般均衡模型与匹配摩擦的纽约市出租车出租车市场。该项目的第二部分探讨了更加依赖于数据中详细空间信息的问题。PI讨论驾驶员如何协调他们的决策，以及他们如何使用可用信息。他们提出了一种新的方法来处理直接观察需求的潜力的限制。由于出租车搜索乘客的时间量是观察到的，PI可以通过使用搜索是一个定义良好的空间过程的事实来恢复等待客户的数量。在供给方面，潜在的驱动者会做出每天的进入决策和每小时的停止决策。然后，必须将这些收入加在一起，以符合均衡收益。出租车的等待时间和数量是内生的，是市场竞争均衡的一部分。PI使用了来自纽约市的数据，其中包括2010年至2013年每一次出租车出行的信息。他们建议放宽进入和所有权限制。他们还提出了一种改变匹配技术的反事实：一个集中的调度员将空出租车发送给最近的乘客。他们研究了效率的提高，减少了乘客和出租车的等待时间，这是调度员控制的市场份额的函数。这与思考Uber等公司的影响有关。在项目的第二部分，PI建议系统地探索在不同类型的集中匹配程序下结果如何变化，以更好地理解各种摩擦的作用和重要性。他们还可以获得有关出租车之间的协调（平衡）程度的信息。市场分割程度不同，可能存在多个帕累托均衡。该项目旨在评估这种市场细分的影响。这个项目除了对纽约市出租车市场明显的政策影响外，还有许多潜在的影响。它可以让研究人员量化一些现有法规的扭曲，如票价结构的可接受性。随着最近技术的进步，许多市场现在面临着替代组织模式的可能性。这种结构性方法允许PI探索这种替代组织的潜力。这对于存在空间摩擦和需要快速提供服务的其他市场也有意义。

Title: Frictions in a Competitive, Regulated Market.This is a time of great transformation in taxi markets everywhere, with the rise of new technology entrants such as Uber and Lyft. Taxi markets in places like New York City resemble a competitive market in some important ways; particularly the presence of a large number of independent participants who do not have market power. However, they also feature impediments, or frictions, to the smooth functioning of such competition. Some of these frictions are regulatory, such as the limits to entry, pricing, and ownership. Some are features of the way the products are delivered. For instance, there is an important "matching friction" that derives from the fact that taxi drivers have limited knowledge about the location of potential passengers, leading to wasteful search or waiting. This project develops and estimates a model that attempts to measure these frictions and discusses policies that may reduce these distortions. It also considers the effects of entrants such as Uber. The PIs study New York City because of the availability of extremely detailed data and because of some interesting features of that market. The first part of the project estimates a dynamic general equilibrium model with matching frictions of the New York City taxi-cab market. The second part of the project explores questions that rely more intensively on the detailed spatial information in the data. The PIs discuss how well drivers coordinate their decisions, and how well they use available information. They propose a novel approach to deal with limitations on the potential to directly observe demand. Because the amount of time a taxi searches for passengers is observed, the PIs can recover the number of waiting customers by using the fact that search is a well-defined spatial process. On the supply-side, potential drivers make a daily entry decision and an hourly stopping decision. These must then be aggregated to be consistent with equilibrium earnings. The wait time and the number of taxis are jointly determined endogenously as part of the competitive equilibrium in this market. The PIs use data from New York City with information on every single cab trip from 2010 to 2013. They propose counterfactuals relaxing entry and ownership restrictions. They also propose a counterfactual that changes the matching technology: a centralized dispatcher who sends empty cabs to the closest passenger. They examine gains in efficiency with reductions in wait times for both passengers and taxis as a function of the fraction of the market controlled by the dispatcher. This is relevant for thinking about the effect of firms such as Uber. In the second part of the project the PIs propose to systematically explore how outcomes change under different types of centralized matching procedures to better understand the role and importance of various frictions. They can also obtain information about the (equilibrium) degree of coordination among taxis. There can be multiple Pareto-ranked equilibria with different degrees of market segmentation. The project aims to evaluate the effects of this market segmentation. This project has many potential impacts beyond the obvious policy implications for the NYC taxi market. It can allow researchers to quantify the distortions of some existing regulations, such as the inflexibility of the fare structures. With recent advances in technology, many markets are now faced with the possibility of alternative modes of organization. This structural approach allows the PIs to explore the potential for such alternative organization. These have relevance for other markets with spatial frictions and a need for rapid delivery of service.