American Economic Review Vol. 113 No. 4 2023

Mobility and Congestion in Urban India

Prottoy Akbar¹; Victor Couture²; Gilles Duranton³; Adam Storeygard⁴

¹ Aalto University and Helsinki Graduate School of Economics (email: ) · ² Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia (email: ) · ³ Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (email: ) · ⁴ Department of Economics, Tufts University (email: )

Abstract

We develop a methodology to estimate robust city-level vehicular speed indices, exactly decomposable into uncongested speed and congestion. We apply it to 180 Indian cities using 57 million simulated trips measured by a web mapping service. We verify the reliability of our simulated trips using a number of alternative data sources, including data on actual trips. We find wide variation in speed across cities that is driven more by differences in uncongested speed than congestion. Denser and more populated cities are slower, only in part because of congestion. Urban economic development is correlated with faster speed despite worse congestion.

DOI

10.1257/aer.20181662

Volume

113

Issue

4

Pages

1083-1111

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite

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