This paper develops analytical and numerical models to explain and estimate the welfare effects of raising Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for new passenger vehicles. The analysis encompasses a wide range of scenarios concerning consumers’ valuation of fuel economy and the full...

Over the past several years, labeling schemes that focus on a wide range of environmental and social metrics have proliferated. Although little empirical evidence has been generated with respect to carbon footprint labels, much can be learned from our experience with similar product labels. We...

Tiebout’s (1956) suggestion that people “vote with their feet” to find the community that provides their optimal bundle of taxes and public goods has played a central role in the theory of local public finance over the past 50 years. Given the central importance of Tiebout’s insights,...

Many countries are tightening passenger vehicle fuel economy standards. In assessing the welfare effects of standards, the literature has not properly accounted either for their effects on the rate of technology adoption, or for improvements in vehicle characteristics in the absence of...

Compared with gasoline engines, diesel fuel engines significantly reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from passenger vehicles, but they emit more nitrogen oxides and other pollutants. Across countries, the market share of diesel fuel engines in passenger vehicles varies from...

Many countries are tightening passenger vehicle fuel economy standards. The literature on passenger vehicle standards has used structural models to estimate their welfare effects. This paper provides the first empirical evidence on the effects of recently tightened fuel economy standards on...

The Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) of the Department of Agriculture has proposed regulations to implement the new Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP). Authorized in the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, BCAP is designed to ensure that a sufficiently large base of new nonfood,...

Auctions are increasingly being used to allocate emissions allowances (“permits”) for cap and trade and common-pool resource management programs. These auctions create thick markets that can provide important information about changes in current market conditions. This paper reports a...

Some environmental policies focus on emissions intensity rather than total emissions, or they try to mitigate the regulatory impact on the final product market. To analyze the effects of these policies, or to evaluate the distributional effects of any regulation on consumers and producers,...

Some studies of renewable portfolio standards find that regulations increase generation costs; others find that reduced demand for nonrenewable energy sources lowers natural gas prices and that electricity prices follow. This paper presents reasoning for why these predictions can vary in the...