Money for MetroCards: How a New Card Fee Made Transit Riders Invest More and Lose More Meiping Sun * March 27, 2021 Abstract In 2013, the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) imposed a $1 card fee (surcharge) on new purchases of prepaid transit cards (MetroCards). Using a novel dataset with transaction-level card information, I show that the fee caused riders to put more money on new MetroCard purchases, particularly those in low-income neighborhoods and those who used cash or debit (rather than credit) cards. As a result, the net monthly outstanding balance of card deposits increased dramatically, with riders lending an extra $150 million, on an annual basis, to the MTA. Moreover, over $20 million of the annual increased balances were never redeemed and escheated to the MTA when these cards expired. The leading explanation highlights card carrying costs. I pose a structural model to calibrate the effect of a new card fee. The importance of card carrying costs may explain the prevalence of required minimum deposit amounts in the online or mobile prepaid services such as E-ZPass and Skype. These findings have implications for public policy designs and fee structures of prepaid services. (JEL D12, H41, R41, R42, R48) *Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Fordham University, Lowenstein 808B, 113 West 60th Street, New York City, NY 10023 (email:
[email protected]). I thank Brendan O’Flaherty, Pietro Ortoleva, Douglas Almond, and Suresh Naidu for invaluable guidance, assistance and advice. I thank Jushan Bai, Alessandra Casella, Donald Davis, Mark Dean, Francois Gerard, Wojciech Kopczuk, Jonah Rockoff, Miikka Rokkanen, Edward Glaeser, Linh To for discussions and comments that shaped the content of this paper.