Consumer Surplus
Using Big Data to Estimate Consumer Surplus: The Case of Uber
Using Big Data to Estimate Consumer Surplus: The Case of Uber
Peter Cohen, Robert Hahn, Jonathan Hall, Steven Levitt, Robert Metcalfe
The authors estimate demand elasticities for Uber’s most used service (UberX). They find that demand is quite inelastic but that demand varies somewhat (but perhaps less than expected) as a function of observable characteristics such as time of day, user experience with Uber, or the presence of close substitutes.