We develop a product market theory that explains why firms invest in general training of their workers. We consider a model where firms first decide whether to invest in general human capital, then make wage offers for each others? trained employees and finally engage in imperfect product market...

Using CPS data for the period 1979-2009, the wage dispersion of truck drivers (and subsets of the truck driving sample) is compared to the trends in wage dispersion of males economy-wide. We find that truckers' wages experienced a decrease in inequality post-deregulation, as expected given the...

Nowcasting has been a challenge in the recent economic crisis. We introduce the Toll Index, a new monthly indicator for business cycle forecasting and demonstrate its relevance using German data. The index measures the monthly transportation activity performed by heavy transport vehicles across...

In New York City (NYC), it has been a common complaint that it is difficult to find a taxi in the rain. Using all Uber rides in NYC from April to September 2014 and January to June 2015, we show that the number of Uber rides is significantly correlated with whether it rained. The number of Uber...

Following market liberalisation, the vehicle population in China has increased dramatically over the past few decades. This paper examines the causal impact of the opening of a heavily used high speed rail line connecting two megacities in China in 2015, Chengdu and Chongqing, on air pollution....

We examine the impact of Articial Intelligence (AI) on productivity in the context of taxi drivers. The AI we study assists drivers with finding customers by suggesting routes along which the demand is predicted to be high. We find that AI improves drivers' productivity by shortening the...

Every year, approximately 27% of all jobs in the U.S. truck transportation sector (NAICS 484) are reshuffled across motor carriers as existing carriers grow or shrink, new entrants begin operations, and existing firms exit. Studying how these dynamics unfold, especially for young carriers, is...

Some of the U.S. states saw sharper declines in truck transportation payrolls at the onset of the COVID-19 shutdown, and others displayed differing trajectories in the rebound of truck transportation payrolls during the economic recovery. Analyzing why provides theoretical and practical insights...

The focus of this study is to assess the causal impact of the connection of a local area to a high-speed rail network (HSR) on firms' total factor productivity (TFP). The quasi-random location of the HSR station in the Italian city of Reggio Emilia is exploited in a Difference-in Differences...

Employee referrals are a very common means by which firms hire new workers. Past work suggests that workers hired via referrals often perform better than non-referred workers, but we have little understanding as to why. In this paper, we demonstrate that this is primarily because referrals allow...