We examine the impact of Artificial 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...

Which Americans experience the worst infrastructure? What are the costs of living with that infrastructure? We measure road roughness throughout America using vertical acceleration data from Uber rides across millions of American roads. Our measure correlates strongly and positively with other...

This paper examines the economic foundations of three criteria used for evaluating the costs and benefits of social programs. Some criteria do not consider the scale of programs or address the costs associated with programs that expand or contract the total government budget. A recent addition...

The "voltage effect" is defined as the tendency for a program's efficacy to change when it is scaled up, which in most cases results in the absolute size of a program's treatment effects to diminish when the program is scaled. Understanding the scaling problem and taking steps to diminish...

Government analysts have long used discount rates based on investment rates of return to approximate the effect of capital displacement. However, we show how this approach is not well grounded in economic theory and produces highly biased results, particularly in the context of decisions...

We calculate the social return on algorithmic interventions (specifically their Marginal Value of Public Funds) across multiple domains of interest to economists--regulation, criminal justice, medicine, and education. Though these algorithms are different, the results are similar and striking....

In 2021, the Biden Administration issued mandates requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for U.S. federal employees and contractors and for some healthcare and private sector workers. Although these mandates have been subject to legal challenges and some have been halted or delayed, rigorous appraisal...

Transportation infrastructure is vital for the smooth functioning of international trade. Ports are a crucial gateway to this system: with more than 80% of trade carried by ships, they shape trade costs, and it is critical that they operate efficiently. Yet ports are susceptible to disruptions,...

Reducing gender-specific commuting barriers in developing countries has complex and diverse effects on women's labor dynamics. We study a program that offers free bus rides for women in several Indian states (the Pink Slip program) using a synthetic difference-in-differences approach to shed...

Following Uber-initiated fare increases, drivers make more money per trip and, initially, more per hour-worked. Drivers begin to work more hours. However, this increase in hours-worked--combined with a reduction in demand from a higher fare--has a business stealing effect, with drivers spending...