Drivers of disruption?: estimating the Uber effect

A frequent belief is that the rise of the 'sharing economy' has led to the displacement of workers in a wide range of traditional jobs. This paper examines the impacts of the flagship of the sharing economy - Uber - on workers employed in conventional taxi services. [The authors'] analysis exploits the staggered rollout of Uber across US cities, showing that employment of payroll taxi services if anything expanded after the introduction of the Uber platform, accompanied by a marked relative shift towards self-employment. While [the authors] find no evidence of adverse employment impacts, [their] estimates show that hourly earnings declined for wage-employed drivers, which were partly offset by increases in income among self-employed drivers. A triple-difference design that compares earnings and employment changes for taxi drivers relative to bus, delivery, tractor, and truck drivers that were unaffected by the arrival of Uber provides further supporting evidence that while Uber has had no negative employment impacts it has reduced the earnings potential of incumbent drivers in point-to-point transportation services.

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