Fare-free public transportation effects’ assessment on french economy

Abstract

This dissertation uses a single event - the implementation of Fare Free Public Transportation (FFPT) in 140 French cities between 1965 and 2018 - to measure thanks to a staggered Difference-in-Differences regression approach, the socioeconomic effects of this policy. The treatment group includes all cities with FFPT. The control group represents all other cities with a public transport network. Our work consisted in the verification of 3 hypotheses: first, free public transport reduces unemployment in the cities concerned. Second, it makes these cities more attractive. The population rate changes are more favourable (said differently, population is growing more or shrinking less) in those places compared to the control group. Finally, this policy would reduce the number of cars per household. Three main lessons can be drawn for this work. First, we found a reduction in unemployment of 0.517% on average when the city has implemented FFPT for more than 5 years for the active population 15-64-years-old and up to -18% unemployment for all municipalities for the 25-54-years-old. This is consistent with our hypothesis. Second, we found no statistically significant effect of FFPT on population growth in city. This frown on our second hypothesis. Finally, our findings indicate a slight but statistically significant impact of FFPT on household’s car ownership (-0.8%). Thus, this confirms the third hypothesis.

Date of Award	25 Oct 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Benny Geys (Supervisor)