CAREER: Marketplace Design for Freight Transportation and Logistics Platforms

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)。这项学院早期职业发展(Career)补助金将通过支持研究数字货运和物流市场，为促进国家繁荣和经济福利做出贡献。美国货运业的市场规模巨大，但也极其分散，效率低下。过去几年出现的数字货运市场正在重塑物流业，它们为承运人和托运人提供了自动化和高效的渠道。该奖项支持研究，以发展对设计和优化数字货运市场的方法的基本理解。研究成果将通过与领先的货运市场公司合作，促进货运市场的不断创新。这项研究还将降低小型卡车运输公司和业主运营商进入货运市场的门槛，为它们提供稳定的工作和可靠的收入，从而使它们受益。小型卡车运输公司和业主运营商占美国所有运输公司的90%以上。随之而来的教育计划旨在教育卡车运输业劳动力关于数字货运市场的知识，并通过实践活动扩大代表不足的社区对STEM的兴趣。货运市场面临着市场供需两方面的重大不确定性，因为它们既表现出地域不平衡，又表现出季节性波动。这项研究将考虑设计、分析和优化双边数字货运平台的市场控制机制。这项研究填补了货运文献中的一个重要空白，该文献主要考虑固定运力的承运人。该项目考虑了各种市场控制机制，如定价、捆绑、拍卖和专用合同；这些机制将需要仔细协调，以形成有效的混合战略，同时考虑到可能从战略上向市场运营商隐瞒其真实偏好的市场参与者。这一研究方法将整合统计分析和因果推断、随机模型、近似动态规划、拍卖和机制设计等领域。这些方法的绩效评估将通过与运营大型市场的货运行业合作伙伴合作的现有数据和实验来提供信息。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant will contribute to the advancement of national prosperity and economic welfare by supporting research to study digital freight and logistics marketplaces. The freight transportation industry in the US is enormous in market size but is also extremely fragmented and suffers from inefficiency. Digital freight marketplaces that emerged over the last few years are reshaping the logistics industry by offering automated and efficient channels to connect carriers with shippers. This award supports research to develop a fundamental understanding of methodologies for designing and optimizing digital freight marketplaces. The research findings will facilitate the growing innovation in the freight transportation marketplaces through collaboration with leading freight marketplace companies. The research also will benefit small trucking carriers and owner-operators, which account for over 90% of all carriers in the U.S., by lowering the barrier for them to participate in freight marketplaces and providing them with steady work and reliable earnings. The accompanying educational plan aims to educate the trucking industry workforce about digital freight marketplaces and broaden STEM interest for underrepresented communities through hands-on activities. Freight marketplaces face significant uncertainty from both the demand and supply side of the market, as they exhibit both geographical imbalance and seasonal volatility. This research will consider designing, analyzing, and optimizing marketplace control mechanisms for two-sided digital freight platforms. This research fills an important gap in the freight transportation literature, which mostly considers carriers with fixed capacities. This project considers a variety of market control mechanisms such as pricing, bundling, auction, and dedicated contracts; these mechanisms will need to be carefully coordinated to form an effective hybrid strategy while accounting for market participants who may strategically withhold their truthful preferences from the market operator. This research methodology will integrate fields such as statistical analysis and causal inference, stochastic models, approximate dynamic programming, auctions, and mechanism design. The performance assessments of the methods will be informed by available data and experiments in collaboration with freight industry partners who operate large-scale marketplaces.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.