Estimating Demand Curves at Uber, and Elsewhere

Swati Rao points out that Steve Dubner interviews his co-Freakonomist, Steve Levitt about "Why Uber is an Economist's Dream".  Among other things, they talk about the new paper that Jonathan Hall, Steve Levitt and others wrote seeking to estimate consumer surplus from Uber, which starts with an estimate of the (short-run) demand curve for Uber.

It's a great discussion, though I'm a bit surprised he said "nobody ever had really actually estimated a demand curve" because its been done numerous times, sometimes with controlled experiments.

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