The Air Quality Effects of Uber

Yeong Jae Kim and Luis Sarmiento

No 21-34, RFF Working Paper Series from Resources for the Future

Abstract: This study identifies the effect of Uber on the air quality of urban agglomerations in the United States. For this, we infer its causal impact on the Environmental Protection Agency’s air quality index with state-of-the-art difference-in-difference estimators accounting for Uber’s staggered implementation and dynamic treatment effects. Results show that Uber improves air quality. The value of the air quality index and the number of unhealthy air quality episodes decrease after its introduction. We provide evidence that the bulk of the improvement comes from declining ozone levels during the summer. Notably, results hold for a plethora of different specifications, samples, and robustness exercises. To the best of our knowledge, this article is the first to estimate the air quality effects of ride-hailing technologies empirically in the United States. However, further research is required to identify the exact mechanisms through which Uber’s impact on the transportation system affects air quality.

Date: 2021-11-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.rff.org/documents/3159/WP_21-34.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-21-34

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in RFF Working Paper Series from Resources for the Future Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Resources for the Future ().