A New Route to Increasing Economic Growth: Reducing Highway Congestion with Autonomous Vehicles
51 Pages Posted: 7 Jun 2018
Date Written: 01/17/2017
Abstract
This paper argues that Californias self-help county tax legislation, which funds additional highway spending, amounts to a natural experiment that can be used to construct a valid instrument to determine highway congestions causal effect on the growth rates of GDP, employment, wages, and commodity freight flows for California counties. Our estimation results indicate that highway congestion has significantly reduced the growth rates of those performance measures. Extrapolating the results to the nation suggests that sizable reductions in highway congestion, which could be achieved with widespread adoption of autonomous (driverless) vehicles, would have large macroeconomic stimulative effects.
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