Passengers May Pay a Lot More. Drivers Won’t Accept Much Less. - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/31/business/passengers-drivers-pay-uber-lyft.html
Ce que l’économie classique peut nous dire de l’avenir de Uber et Lyft...
Uber and Lyft, the two leading ride-share companies, have lost a great deal of money and don’t project a profit any time soon.
Yet they are both trading on public markets with a combined worth of more than $80 billion. Investors presumably expect that these companies will some day find a path to profitability, which leaves us with a fundamental question: Will that extra money come mainly from higher prices paid by consumers or from lower wages paid to drivers?
Old-fashioned economics provides an answer: Passengers, not drivers, are likely to be the main source of financial improvement, at least within the next few years, mainly because of something called “relative price sensitivity.”
This conclusion may seem to run counter to popular wisdom. Wall Street analysts have suggested that Uber and Lyft will need to squeeze their drivers. Those workers are quite concerned about the possibility. Thousands went on a one-day strike before Uber’s initial public offering in May to demand higher pay and more benefits.