Investment in charging infrastructure plays a crucial role in facilitating the widespread adoption of electric vehicles (EVs). Beyond the well-recognized network externalities, the establishment of a charging station also gives rise to spatial spillover effects, where the presence of a station in a remote area can positively influence EV adoption in other regions. Unlike vertically integrated firms like Tesla, independent stations often lack the incentive to fully internalize both sources of externalities, which can lead to over-provision of stations in urban areas and under-provision in rural areas. This paper investigates the effect of the geographical distribution of public fast-speed charging stations on EV adoption in the U.S. from 2009 to 2019. I develop a dynamic model of station entry that characterizes the interdependence between the growth of EV adoption and investment in charging stations. A novel component of the model is the way it captures features of a charging network such as its density at local regions and connectivity over long distances. I estimate the model using spatial data on charging stations and EV registration data. Assuming that station owners are motivated to strategically build charging stations at optimal locations to effectively promote the widespread adoption of EV, I simulate counterfactual industry outcomes, such as station entry and EV stock. The results indicate that optimizing the geographic distribution of independent charging stations through the reallocation of 9% of stations in urban counties to non-urban counties could have resulted in a 70% increase in non-Tesla EV stock by 2019 while maintaining the same total number of stations.
Competition Among Concert Promoters: A Study of Concert Tour Routing Network
Concert promoters are firms primarily responsible for assisting artists in securing and booking venues for their performances. Ownership consolidation of promoters in recent decades facilitates a geographical network of venues that an integrated promoter has control over across the country, which allows national promoters to internalize potential coordination problem when scheduling touring routes for different artists. This paper analyzes this source of efficiency gain from a merger of promoters. I construct a structural model of promoter oligopoly competition in which each promoter takes the ticket prices as exogenous and maximizes the aggregate profit over the course of a year across a portfolio of artists and make decisions regarding the date and location of each concert. I take a revealed preference approach to estimate the structural model and then simulate a merger between the two largest US promoters in order to evaluate the efficiency gains from coordination.