CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Technological advances in autonomous truck technology are poised to have significant economic ripple effects for U.S. interstate commerce, highway infrastructure and labor costs, says new research co-written by a team of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign economists. Self-driving truck technology “has a very high potential to change the economic geography of the U.S.,” said Taejun Mo, an Illinois graduate student and first author of the paper. “We all know that there’s already very good truck transportation infrastructure in the U.S., with a lot of cargo crisscrossing the country,” he said. “But autonomous truck transportation can make everything even more efficient. Human truck drivers cannot drive 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Autonomous trucks can, and their routes can be even more direct since they don’t have to stop. Self-driving technology has great potential to rewrite the economic geography of the U.S., which in and of itself will create new winners and losers.” The paper, which was published by the Journal of Regional Science, was co-written by Illinois agricultural and consumer economics professors Sandy Dall’erba, William Ridley, Yilan Xu and Hyungsun Yim. The researchers estimated the widespread implementation of driverless truck technology in the U.S. could reduce transportation costs by 35%, resulting in significant increases in total interstate trade value. But since transportation costs influence trade flows differently depending on each state’s economic specialization, “the impact would vary across states,” Mo said. According to the paper, the researchers found distinct patterns of increases across specific areas of the country, with the South‐Central and Midwest regions of the U.S. — Mississippi, Kentucky, Arkansas, Kansas and Iowa, for example — exhibiting the highest percentage increases in exports, while the largest absolute values in export increases were concentrated in economically significant states such as California, Texas, Illinois and Pennsylvania. “Our