Research · Border friction
Cross-Border Commuting
Border policy prices more than a trip. This research follows the combined cost of money, delay, reliability, and eligibility across a cross-border location bundle.
Current paper
Money, Time, or Eligibility? Border Frictions and the Cross-Border Location Bundle treats residence, workplace, consumption market, and crossing frequency as one joint choice. The border wedge combines the resources a household spends to assemble that bundle.
Empirical core
The current design studies the December 2015 opening of Cross Border Xpress, a priced direct connection for ticketed Tijuana Airport passengers. A result-blind synthetic control finds legacy-port person crossings 0.71% above their comparison from January through June 2016; the comparable-placebo negative rank is 0.688.
Pedestrian crossings move in the diversion direction, personal-vehicle passengers do not decline, and an auxiliary wait contrast detects no congestion relief. Annual airport traffic supplies directional evidence of induced demand, not a causal airport estimate.
Limits of the estimate
The CBX treatment combines a direct connection, terminal and inspection service, ticketed-passenger eligibility, and a fee. The estimate is the short-run reduced form of that package. It does not isolate a pure fee effect, value of time, marginal congestion cost, or welfare.
Comparative design
San Diego–Tijuana supplies the reproducible policy estimate. Singapore–Johor Bahru, Hong Kong–Shenzhen, Øresund, Swiss border regions, Liechtenstein, and European internal borders define other mechanisms and future designs. Their treatments, units, and outcomes differ, so the project does not pool them into a global border effect.