Industrial activity periodically experiences breakthrough innovations in energy efficiency, but the estimated impacts of these innovations on aggregate energy use are highly varied. We develop a general equilibrium model to investigate whether this variation is determined by the structure of the...

Improvements in energy efficiency can reduce costs of consuming services from cars and appliances and result in positive rebound that offsets part of the direct energy reduction. Our analytical general equilibrium model decomposes rebound into direct and indirect effects. A costless technology...

The rebound effect is a well-known behavioral response whereby potential energy savings from efficiency improvements are partially offset by increased consumption of energy services, as the marginal cost of energy services is reduced. This paper characterizes a similar rebound effect related to...

Many OECD countries such as the USA, the UK or Switzerland are concerned with the affordability of utility services and the distributional consequences inherent in the pricing strategy of basic goods and services, such as electricity. However, the effectiveness of the electricity tariff as a...

We use an experiment to test whether consumers optimally acquire information on energy costs in appliance markets where, like many contexts, consumers are poorly informed and make mistakes despite freely available information. To test for optimal information acquisition we compare the average...

This paper studies seven rebate programs aiming at accelerating the replacement of energy-intensive household appliances. Based on a large product-level data set for several European countries, we study the effects on unit sales and prices of both subsidized and non-subsidized products. The...

This paper investigates the factors (such as different sources of financing, energy audits and internal monitoring activities) affecting the propensity of European small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to adopt energy efficiency measures (EEMs). For this purpose, a Probit model is estimated...

We analyze welfare implications of policies promoting environmentally friendly vehicles employing rich Swiss micro-data on 23,000 newly purchased cars and their buyers. Our estimates reveal substantial income heterogeneity in price elasticity and electric vehicle (EV) adoption. While CO2 levies...

I build a quantitative model of economic growth that can be used to evaluate the impact of environmental policy interventions on final-use energy consumption, an important driver of carbon emissions. In the model, energy demand is driven by directed technical change. Energy supply is subject to...

We provide evidence of an energy efficiency gap in China. Using an incentivized field experiment, we document that providing information to consumers on the energy costs of lightbulbs significantly affects their willingness to pay for energy efficient bulbs. Unlike previous literature, we do not...