Grain shippers and political figures in North Dakota and nearby states have voiced concern that the dramatic increases in shipments of crude oil by rail have caused service delays and higher costs. We investigate the potential impact of crude shipments on grain markets accounting for harvest effects and other potential sources of rail congestion. Increased crude oil shipments are associated with substantially larger spreads between wheat prices at regional elevators and in Minneapolis, the market hub. The effect on corn and soybean spreads are an order of magnitude smaller. Increased oil traffic is associated with small increases in rail rates but large increases in rail car auction prices. We document increases in wheat carry (storage) costs and decreases in shipment quantities. Surprisingly, little of the spread increase is due to lower prices paid to farmers, suggesting consumers rather than producers paid the cost of increased rail congestion.  

Highway fatalities are a leading cause of death in the U.S. and other industrialized countries worldwide. Here, using highly detailed accident, speed and flow data, we show highway travel and motor vehicle accidents fell substantially in California during the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we also show that the frequency of severe accidents increased due to lower traffic congestion and higher highway speeds. This “speed effect” is largest in counties with high pre-existing levels of congestion and can partially or completely offset the effect of reduced driving on total fatalities. During the first eleven weeks of the COVID-19 response, highway driving decreased by approximately 22% and total accidents decreased by 49%. While average speeds increased by a modest 2 to 3 miles-per-hour across the state, they increased between 10 and 15 miles-per-hour in several counties. The proportion of severe accidents increased nearly 5 percentage points, or 25%. While fatalities decreased initially following restrictions, increased speeds mitigated the effect of lower vehicle miles traveled on fatalities, yielding little to no reduction in fatalities later in the COVID period. These results have important implications for policies such as congestion tolls or highway expansion that lower congestion and increase highway speeds.

With unique datasets, this paper studies the externalities of bike sharing by examining house prices. We find that, for neighborhoods that are relatively far from subway  stations, house prices increase with the usage intensity of shared bikes. This indicates a positive externality of bike sharing as a complement to the subway network. For neighborhoods near subway stations, however, house prices decrease with the intensity, especially if we exclude neighborhoods with a high-quality management service or if we look at the neighborhoods far from City Management Teams. This indicates a negative externality, which may be caused by the misplacement of shared bikes. Since the breakout of COVID-19, both the positive and negative externalities have become more capitalized into house prices; time-on-market also exhibits consistent patterns. This suggests that the profit sustainability of bike sharing has increased post the COVID-19 pandemic.

We exploit newly available microdata on goods movement in the U.S. to model shippers’ freight mode choices. Because freight modes have vastly different fuel intensities, shippers’ choices have large implications for fuel consumption and emissions. We find higher fuel prices yield substantial shifts from less to more fuel-efficient modes, particularly rail. We extend our model to analyze recently enacted fuel economy standards. Fuel economy standards can increase emissions and fuel consumption by shifting shipments to less fuel-efficient modes. Our results suggest mode-shifting makes up a large share of the total rebound effect in heavy-duty vehicles.