Bryan Weber

City University of New York - College of Staten Island | CSI CUNY · Department of Economics

This paper investigates the association of Uber, a substantial transportation innovation, with crime counts in urban areas that have accepted the program. I find the introduction of Uber to be associated with a large and significant reduction of personal crimes by 5% in treated cities (about 43 personal crimes a month, roughly 41 assaults), and dis...

We examine the effect on the incidence of casualties and crashes of a city-wide vehicle speed limit reduction in New York City (NYC) streets. The law change, part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Vision Zero Action Plan to improve traffic safety, cuts the default speed limit for streets with no speed limit signs from 30 to 25 mph beginning November 7, 201...

Purpose This paper aims to identify the disproportionate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on labor markets. Design/methodology/approach The authors conduct a large-scale survey on 16,000 firms from 82 industries in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and analyze the data set by using different machine-learning methods. Findings First, job loss and reducti...

Introduction and method: We use the arguably exogenous intensity of COVID-19 as an instrument in order to study the relationship between traffic volume and vehicle collisions in a large metropolitan area. We correlate data from multiple sources and consider a time interval ranging from about one year before to one year after the pandemic breakout,...

In 2017, over a dozen ferry stations were introduced across the NYC region on multiple dates, serving roughly 10,000 customers per day. We measure a negative association between these stations and crime reduction, a significant decline of 11 crimes per week (11%) at a one-mile radius around the stations, and about 1 crime per week (32%) over the ex...

We use the unique data set of 16,300 firms' responses for the large-scale census survey in an urban area at Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) to study how firms perceived their problems and responded to during the COVID-19 pandemic. We provide estimates of 65 cross-associations between a firm's challenges during the pandemic and their responses. We find s...

In this paper, we provide an application that produces consistent in-game estimates of win probabilities in Dota 2. Previous work shows that common methods of identifying the effect of in-game features are strongly inconsistent, which we corroborate here with a large data set. We further provide an in-game application for players to see these estim...

Predicting catastrophes involves heavy‐tailed distributions with no mean, eluding proactive policy as expected cost‐benefit analysis fails. We study US government counterterrorism policy, given heightened risk of terrorism. But terrorism also involves human behavior. We synthesize the behavioral and statistical aspects in an adversary‐defender game...

Purpose The proliferation of terrorism worldwide raises the risk that terrorist strategies could evolve from conventional methods (e.g. suicide attacks) to biological, chemical and even radioactive and nuclear attacks (commonly abbreviated as CBRN) which are potentially much more dangerous. The authors make three contributions toward a better under...

This paper uniquely examines the influence of a new university bus service on urban crime. It concentrates on the interaction between the new bus service and a long-standing safe ride program. The new bus service is associated with a decline in safe rides, and such substitution raises the well-known concern that a fixed transit route may concentrat...

Predicting catastrophes sometimes involves heavy-tailed distributions with no mean, eluding proactive policy since expected cost-benefit based analysis fails. We study US government counterterrorism policy, given heightened risk of terrorism. However, terrorism involves human behavior. We synthesize the behavioral and statistical aspects within an...

Abstract: This paper reviews an entrant to this year’s Star-Craft: Brood War AI tournament, CUNYbot. CUNYbot makes strategic decisions using a low-dimensional economic model traditionally used to describe the behavior of countries, but has applications for any real-time-strategy game (RTS) where the capital/labor ratio (k) and technology/labor rati...

This study evaluates the influence of a safe ride program on neighborhood crime in a major urban area. Using an hours of the week panel, the program’s operation is associated with an approximate 14 percent reduction in crime. The program being open appears to have roughly similar influences on different categories of crime. Moreover, increases in r...