嘉    宾：王思莹 助理教授 上海财经大学商

主持人： 段伊戈 助理教授  上海交通大学安泰经济与管理

时    间：2026年4月22日（周三）14:00-15:30

地    点: 上海交通大学徐汇校区安泰经济与管理A503

内容简介：This paper evaluates how highways affect intracity travel and welfare by combining granular smartphone GPS data with a quantitative urban model. Using tract-to-tract visit flows aggregated from smartphone GPS and census data, I estimate gravity models for consumption and commuting travel that allow for barrier or conduit effects from interaction with highways. I find that, in dense urban areas, additional travel frictions associated with highways largely offset the benefits of faster travel for short trips. Conditional on travel time, consumption destinations reached by crossing or using urban highways are at least 23.5% less likely to be chosen, while suburban highways impose little additional penalty, and highway barriers for commuting flows are much smaller. When I instead condition on travel distance, destinations connected by suburban highways are 15% more likely to be chosen - reflecting the value of faster speeds - whereas the average effect of urban highway use becomes nearly neutral. I embed these estimates in a quantitative urban model with a new travel-based formulation of location amenities that generates consumption agglomeration. Counterfactual highway systems that remove the estimated barrier effects raise welfare by 9-10%, with most gains coming from improved access to consumption amenities rather than commuting.

演讲人简介：王思莹，上海财经大学商助理教授，英属哥伦比亚大学(UBC)尚德商，商业经济学博士。研究领域为城市与空间经济学、国际贸易、财产组织学，当前研究兴趣集中于交通基础设施、空间互动与福利分析等方向。其代表论文发表于 Journal of Public Economics等期刊。