Access to public transit infrastructure changes the patterns of where people live and work. Economists also know those changes are necessarily all improvements, nor do they affect everyone. Bisma Khan, a PhD Candidate with the Department of Economics, studied the creation and implementation of Lahore’s Rapid Transit Bus System (BRT) to learn exactly what changes public transit in developing countries can deliver and for whom. She examined how this introduction of public transit affected residential sorting, and labour supply.

For her job market paper, Public Transit, Residential Sorting and Labor Supply: Evidence and Theory from Lahore’s Bus Rapid Transit System, Khan compared areas within 2 km of completed BRT stops with areas within 2 km of planned, but not yet completed bus lines. Using this quasi-experimental design, her paper highlights the differing consequences of transit infrastructure in developing cities for different population segments. [Read more…]