Stephen Zoepf
Stanford University
Center for Automotive Research
at Stanford (CARS)
E-Mail: 
Institutional Affiliation: Stanford University
NBER Working Papers and Publications
October 2016 | Racial and Gender Discrimination in Transportation Network Companies
with Yanbo Ge, Christopher R. Knittel, Don MacKenzie: w22776
Passengers have faced a history of discrimination in transportation systems. Peer transportation companies such as Uber and Lyft present the opportunity to rectify long-standing discrimination or worsen it. We sent passengers in Seattle, WA and Boston, MA to hail nearly 1,500 rides on controlled routes and recorded key performance metrics. Results indicated a pattern of discrimination, which we observed in Seattle through longer waiting times for African American passengers—as much as a 35 percent increase. In Boston, we observed discrimination by Uber drivers via more frequent cancellations against passengers when they used African American-sounding names. Across all trips, the cancellation rate for African American sounding names was more than twice as frequent compared to white sounding... |
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