IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wat/wpaper/21001.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Fighting for Fares: Uber and the Declining Market Price of Licensed Taxicabs

Author

Listed:
  • Alina Garnham

    (Department of Economics, Queen’s University, Canada)

  • Derek Stacey

    (Department of Economics, University of Waterloo, Canada)

Abstract

In this paper, we study how the emergence of Uber in a large North American city affects the market price of taxicab licenses. A taxicab license provides a claim to a stream of dividends in the form of rents generated by operating the taxicab or leasing the license. The introduction of Uber undoubtedly affects the anticipated stream of dividends because Uber drivers capture part of the farebox revenue that might otherwise go to the owners/drivers of licensed taxicabs. At the same time, the launch of Uber's innovative technology-driven approach to the provision of ride-hailing services can be viewed as a partial obsolescence of the traditional taxicab approach. The economic incentives facing market participants may therefore change as Uber gains momentum in the ride-hailing market, which could further affect the market value of licensed taxicabs. Using transaction-level data, we apply a theory of asset pricing to the secondary market for Toronto taxicab licenses to explore these potential price ef- fects. We learn that both the farebox and innovation effects contribute to the overall decline in market value. The farebox effect explains approximately 60% of the price decline; the innovation effect can account for the rest.

Suggested Citation

  • Alina Garnham & Derek Stacey, 2021. "Fighting for Fares: Uber and the Declining Market Price of Licensed Taxicabs," Working Papers 21001, University of Waterloo, Department of Economics, revised Apr 2022.
  • Handle: RePEc:wat:wpaper:21001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://uwaterloo.ca/economics/sites/ca.economics/files/uploads/files/fighting_for_fares_uber_and_the_declining_market_price_of_licensed_taxicabs.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Darrell Duffie, 2012. "Over-The-Counter Markets," Introductory Chapters, in: Dark Markets: Asset Pricing and Information Transmission in Over-the-Counter Markets, Princeton University Press.
    2. Ricardo Lagos & Guillaume Rocheteau, 2009. "Liquidity in Asset Markets With Search Frictions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(2), pages 403-426, March.
    3. Vayanos, Dimitri & Wang, Tan, 2007. "Search and endogenous concentration of liquidity in asset markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 66-104, September.
    4. Berger, Thor & Chen, Chinchih & Frey, Carl Benedikt, 2018. "Drivers of disruption? Estimating the Uber effect," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 197-210.
    5. Hall, Jonathan D. & Palsson, Craig & Price, Joseph, 2018. "Is Uber a substitute or complement for public transit?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 36-50.
    6. Peter Cohen & Robert Hahn & Jonathan Hall & Steven Levitt & Robert Metcalfe, 2016. "Using Big Data to Estimate Consumer Surplus: The Case of Uber," NBER Working Papers 22627, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Joseph, Andreas & Vasios, Michalis, 2022. "OTC Microstructure in a period of stress: A Multi-layered network approach," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    2. Lagos, Ricardo, 2010. "Asset prices and liquidity in an exchange economy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(8), pages 913-930, November.
    3. Julien Hugonnier & Benjamin Lester & Pierre-Olivier Weill, 2020. "Frictional Intermediation in Over-the-Counter Markets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 87(3), pages 1432-1469.
    4. Semih Üslü, 2019. "Pricing and Liquidity in Decentralized Asset Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 87(6), pages 2079-2140, November.
    5. Bruno Biais & Pierre-Olivier Weill, 2009. "Liquidity Shocks and Order Book Dynamics," NBER Working Papers 15009, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Agrawal, David R. & Zhao, Weihua, 2023. "Taxing Uber," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 221(C).
    7. Xavier Fageda, 2021. "Measuring the impact of ride‐hailing firms on urban congestion: The case of Uber in Europe," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 100(5), pages 1230-1253, October.
    8. Vayanos, Dimitri & Wang, Jiang, 2013. "Market Liquidity—Theory and Empirical Evidence ," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1289-1361, Elsevier.
    9. Athanasios Geromichalos & Lucas Herrenbrueck & Sukjoon Lee, 2023. "The Strategic Determination of the Supply of Liquid Assets," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 49, pages 1-36, July.
    10. Weill, Pierre-Olivier, 2020. "The search theory of OTC markets," CEPR Discussion Papers 14847, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Athanasios Geromichalos & Lucas Herrenbrueck & Sukjoon Lee, 2023. "The Strategic Determination of the Supply of Liquid Assets," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 49, pages 1-36, July.
    12. Madison, Florian, 2024. "Asymmetric information in frictional markets for liquidity: Collateralized credit vs asset sale," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    13. Afonso, Gara, 2011. "Liquidity and congestion," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 324-360, July.
    14. Junhong Chu & Yige Duan & Xianling Yang & Li Wang, 2021. "The Last Mile Matters: Impact of Dockless Bike Sharing on Subway Housing Price Premium," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(1), pages 297-316, January.
    15. Robert Shimer & Gregor Jarosch & Maryam Farboodi, 2016. "Meeting Technologies in Decentralized Asset Markets," 2016 Meeting Papers 844, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    16. Cemil Selcuk, 2017. "Distressed Sales in OTC Markets," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 85(3), pages 357-393, June.
    17. John M. Barrios & Yael Hochberg & Hanyi Yi, 2020. "The Cost of Convenience: Ridehailing and Traffic Fatalities," NBER Working Papers 26783, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Batchimeg Sambalaibat & Artem Neklyudov, 2016. "Endogenous Specialization and Dealer Networks," 2016 Meeting Papers 1041, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    19. Yu An & Zeyu Zheng, 2023. "Immediacy Provision and Matchmaking," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(2), pages 1245-1263, February.
    20. Ji Shen & Bin Wei & Hongjun Yan, 2021. "Financial Intermediation Chains in an Over-the-Counter Market," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(7), pages 4623-4642, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wat:wpaper:21001. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sherri Anne Arsenault (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dewatca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.