A Commuter Might Make a Choice to Travel Early Or Late, in Order to Avoid Traffic Jams

01440

Author: Tsai Wei R. Lee

Mentor: Ivan Jeliazkov

Title: Modeling Scheduling Choice via Multinomial Probit

A commuter might make a choice to travel early or late to avoid traffic congestion. Based on Professor Kenneth Small's 1982 study of individual scheduling choice, this project constructs and estimates a multinomial probit model and uses it to estimate the marginal rate of substitution between scheduling change and travel time. The multinomial probit model provides a natural connection to economic choice theory, similarly to Small (1982), but allows for greater flexibility in the econometric setup. The Bayesian approach taken here also allows for an ease of incorporating a modeling hierarchy, and a preliminary result shows that a hierarchical specification may be useful in the empirical study. The presentation of this study draws mainly from the hierarchical extension to incorporate heterogeneity in scheduling choice.