Economics of Transportation in the 21st Century
To promote research in transportation economics and to strengthen the economic foundations for transportation policies in the 21st century, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), with the support of the US Department of Transportation (DOT), is carrying out a multi-year research initiative on “Transportation Economics in the 21st Century.” This initiative, led by NBER affiliates Edward Glaeser (Harvard University), James Poterba (MIT), and Stephen Redding (Princeton University), brings together researchers in various subfields of economics -- energy economics, industrial organization, macroeconomics, environmental economics, regional and urban economics, regulatory economics, and public finance, as well as transportation economics -- to study issues of current importance in the transportation sector and to develop an agenda for future research.
This research project will host a virtual conference on Friday, October 18, 2024, to showcase new findings in transportation economics. It will address a range of possible topics, including but not limited to:
* The demand for electric vehicles and how it is affected by public and private infrastructure provision.
* The economic forces affecting transportation safety and the impact of new technologies, such as in-vehicle tests for sobriety and inter-vehicle communication and monitoring tools.
* The effects tax and regulatory policies on transportation-related pollution, and the cost of reducing the carbon emissions from the transportation sector.
* The impact of differential access to transportation services and historical infrastructure investments on disparities in economic outcomes across racial, ethnic, geographic, and socioeconomic groups.
* The measurement of the benefits and costs of, and willingness to pay for, transport infrastructure improvements, along with market-based mechanisms for pricing such improvements.
* The economic factors that affect the development of new transportation modalities, such as ridesharing, and new options for transportation services, such as autonomous vehicles.
* The impact of new technologies for managing surface freight transportation, including data-intensive analysis using tools such as machine learning.
* The impact of the transportation sector on aggregate economic activity and the distribution of economic activity within urban areas and between rural and urban areas.
* The implications of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent developments such as increased work-from-home on public transit systems and transportation infrastructure more generally.
* The returns to, and financing of, investments in and maintenance of transportation infrastructure, including roads, rail, air, pipelines, ports, and liquid natural gas terminals.
Submission of papers by researchers with and without NBER affiliations, from early career scholars and from researchers from under-represented groups, are welcome. Please do not submit papers that will be published by October 2024.
To be considered for inclusion on the program, papers must be uploaded by 11:59pm ET on Thursday, August 29, 2024.
All papers should include a comprehensive conflict of interest statement that describes any financial or other interests that the researchers might have with regard to the research.
Decisions about which papers will be included on the program will be announced in early September 2024. Please feel free to forward this call to others who might be conducting research on related topics. Questions about this meeting may be directed to confer@nber.org.