Thank you to Nicole Adler, Professor at Hebrew University Business School, who presented Regulating Automated Vehicle Markets at the Institute of Transportation Studies Transportation Seminar on Friday, October 24, 2025.
Abstract: Regulating Automated Vehicle Markets with Dr. Amir Brudner. We examine how the organization of automated vehicle (AV) services influences commuter access, pricing and welfare in suburban areas. A game-theoretic model is developed in which commuters endogenously sort into three groups: non-travelers, users of AV feeder services to connect with public transport and direct AV riders. This threshold-based framework allows for a comparison of welfare outcomes across alternative market designs. Four service configurations are analyzed: a single monopolist, regional monopolists, a service-based duopoly and an oligopoly. The analysis shows that consumer surplus increases with competition, but overall welfare follows a non-monotonic pattern, peaking with limited competition. Both excessive concentration and fragmentation generate inefficiencies in terms of commuter exclusion, pricing, frequencies and congestion. Optimal subsidy and pricing schemes differ substantially across settings, with targeted feeder subsidies preferred in concentrated markets and congestion charges necessary in fragmented markets. A calibrated case study from Hamilton, Ontario, demonstrates potential policy implications. The results highlight the importance of aligning regulatory instruments with industry structure to improve equity and efficiency in future AV-integrated transport systems.
Bio: Nicole Adler is a Full Professor of Operations Research at the Hebrew University Business School and served as Dean (2020–2024). Her research interests include game engineering and productivity modeling. Incorporating optimization with micro-economic concepts, cost-benefit assessments, geographical spatial analyses, data envelopment analysis, and stochastic directional distance functions into the field of transport has led to creative new ways of understanding transport markets’ development and potential transformation. Her research is truly multi-disciplinary, and she has been fortunate to work with students and faculty in the fields of economics, industrial and civil engineering, business, mathematics, geography, public policy, and even physics.
Prof. Adler has served as Visiting Professor at Northwestern University in Chicago, University of British Columbia, and the University of Bergamo. She has published her works in Management Science, the European Journal of Operational Research, Annals of Operations Research, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Omega, Transportation Science, Transportation Research part A: Policy and Practice, Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Transportation Research part E: Logistics, Economics of Transportation, Global Strategy Journal, and the Journal of International Business Studies, among others.
She is Associate Editor of Transportation Research part B: Methodological, and a member of the Editorial Review Boards of the Journal of Air Transport Management, the DEA Journal, and in the past, Omega. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the European Aviation Conference, the ATRS Airport Benchmarking Group, and the Operations Research Societies of Israel (ORSIS), Europe (EURO), and the US (INFORMS). As part of a European Union-funded COST Action consortium on the topic of Air Transport and Regional Development (ATARD), Adler has helped edit three books, published by Routledge. In addition, she has worked with many regulators around the world, including the European Union, the Israeli Competition Authority, the Israeli Civil Aviation Authority, the Japanese Shinkansen High-Speed Rail Company, the Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications, the OECD International Transport Forum, and the Single European Sky Air Traffic Management regulator, known as SESAR.
Prof. Adler earned her Ph.D. in Operations Research from Tel Aviv University’s Recanati Graduate School of Business Administration. She holds an M.Sc. in Operations Research from the London School of Economics, and a B.Sc. in Economics and Accounting from the University of Ulster. She was also a Kreitman Foundation Fellow at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where she did her post-doc. She teaches courses in big-data analytics, operations research, and productivity management and operations management. Adler’s past doctoral students include Ekaterina Yazhemsky, Mali Sher, and Nicola Volta. She is currently advising Amir Brudner, Adit Kivel, Shravana Kumar, Yifan Xu, and Gianmarco Andreana. Gerben de Jong will be a visiting post-doc in Adler’s research group over the next year and a half.