Week14_Greenwood, G. and Wattal, S. (2016) _Ada

Show Me the Way To Go Home

: An Empirical Investigation of Ride Sharing and Alcohol Related Motor Vehicle Homicide

Preliminary analysis conducted by Uber and several industry analysts suggest that introduction of Uber and other ride sharing services has a negative influence on DUI arrests. However, these studies have been questioned on several grounds: including involvement of Uber in the data analysis, methodological rigor (i.e. single city estimations), and the presence of confounding factors such as changes in city’s population, bar scene, and tougher enforcement. In this work, they investigate how the entry of the driving service Uber influences the rate of alcohol related motor vehicle homicides. Using  a   difference  in  difference   approach  to  exploit  a  natural  experiment,  the  entry  of  Uber  into  markets  in   California between 2009 and 2013, findings suggest that the entrance of Uber X results in a 3.6% – 5.6% decrease in the rate of motor vehicle homicides per quarter in the state of California. These results extant understanding of the sharing economy.