American Economic Journal: Applied Economics · 2021 · Joshua D. Angrist、Sydnee Caldwell、Jonathan V. Hall
中文摘要
网约车司机将其车费的一定比例支付给网约车平台运营商，这是许多服务提供商采用的基于佣金的报酬模式。对优步司机而言，这笔佣金被称为优步费（Uber fee）。相比之下，美国大多数城市的传统出租车司机支付一笔与其收入无关的固定费用，通常是按周或按日租赁出租车牌照（medallion），从而保留扣除租赁成本及其他费用后的每一美元车费。我们通过一项实验评估这些报酬模式，该实验向波士顿优步司机的随机样本提供租赁虚拟出租车牌照的机会，租赁后可免除优步费。部分司机被提供的费用为负。司机对我们报价的劳动供给反应显示出较大的跨期替代弹性，量级约为1.2，且在接受租赁合同的司机中弹性更高。与此同时，我们的虚拟租赁计划认购不足：许多本可以从购买廉价租赁中获益的司机选择不参与。我们利用这些结果计算使司机在网约车式与出租车式报酬合同之间无差异所需的平均补偿。结果表明，网约车司机从无需租赁即可驾车的机会中获得了可观的收益。
Abstract
Rideshare drivers pay a proportion of their fares to a ride-hailing platform operator, a commission-based compensation model used by many service providers. To Uber drivers, this commission is known as the Uber fee. By contrast, traditional taxi drivers in most US cities make a fixed payment independent of their earnings, usually a weekly or daily medallion lease, keeping every fare dollar net of lease costs and other expenses. We assess these compensation models using an experiment that offered random samples of Boston Uber drivers opportunities to lease a virtual taxi medallion that eliminates the Uber fee. Some drivers were offered a negative fee. Drivers’ labor supply response to our offers reveals a large intertemporal substitution elasticity, on the order of 1.2, and higher for those who accept lease contracts. At the same time, our virtual lease program was undersubscribed: many drivers who would have benefited from buying an inexpensive lease chose to sit out. We use these results to compute the average compensation required to make drivers indifferent between rideshare and taxi-style compensation contracts. The results suggest that rideshare drivers gain considerably from the opportunity to drive without leasing.