At least one co-author has disclosed a financial relationship of potential relevance for this research. Further information is available online at http://www.nber.org/papers/w23891.ack NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Rideshare drivers pay a proportion of their fares to a ride-hailing platform operator, a commission-based compensation model used by many service providers. To Uber drivers, this commission is known as the Uber fee. By contrast, traditional taxi drivers in most US cities make a fixed payment independent of their earnings, usually a weekly or daily medallion lease, keeping every fare dollar net of lease costs and other expenses. We assess these compensation models using an experiment that offered random samples of Boston Uber drivers opportunities to lease a virtual taxi medallion that eliminates the Uber fee. Some drivers were offered a negative fee. Drivers’ labor supply response to our offers reveals a large intertemporal substitution elasticity, on the order of 1.2, and higher for those who accept lease contracts. At the same time, our virtual lease program was undersubscribed: many drivers who would have benefited from buying an inexpensive lease chose to sit out. We use these results to compute the average compensation required to make drivers indifferent between rideshare and taxi-style compensation contracts. The results suggest that rideshare drivers gain considerably from the opportunity to drive without leasing. (JEL J22, J31, L84, L92)

Transfers paid through annual tax refunds are a large but uncertain source of income for poor households. We document that low-income tax-filers have substantial subjective uncertainty about these refunds. We investigate the determinants and consequences of refund uncertainty by linking survey, tax, and credit bureau data. On average, filers' expectations track realized refunds. More uncertain filers have larger differences between expected and realized refunds. Filers borrow in anticipation of their refunds, but more uncertain filers borrow less, consistent with precautionary behavior. A simple consumption-savings model suggests that refund uncertainty reduces the welfare benefits of the EITC by about 10 percent.

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