Generating electricity from renewable sources is more expensive than conventional approaches, but reduces pollution externalities. Analyzing the tradeoff is much more challenging than often presumed, because the value of electricity is extremely dependent on the time and location at which it is...

Greater use of renewable energy is seen as a key component of any move to combat climate change, and is being aggressively promoted as such by the new U.S. administration and by other governments. Yet there is little economic analysis of renewable energy. This paper surveys what is written and...

The incidence of taxes on consumers and producers plays a central role in evaluating energy tax policy, yet the literature testing the main predictions of the tax incidence model is sparse. In this paper, we examine the pass-through rate of state gasoline and diesel taxes to retail prices, and...

Policy-makers have instituted a variety of fuel economy tax policies -- polices that tax or subsidize new vehicle purchases on the basis of fuel economy performance -- in the hopes of improving fleet fuel economy and reducing gasoline consumption. This article reviews existing policies and...

We analyze a dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium (DSGE) model with an externality through climate change from using fossil energy. A central result of our paper is an analytical derivation of a simple formula for the marginal externality damage of emissions. This formula, which holds under...

To investigate how fuel economy is valued in the Indian car market, we compute the cost to Indian consumers of purchasing a more fuel-efficient vehicle and compare it to the benefit of lower fuel costs over the life of the vehicle. We use hedonic price functions for four market segments (petrol...

Fuel economy standards change the composition of the vehicle fleet, potentially influencing accident safety. I introduce a model of the fleet that captures risks across interactions between vehicle types while simultaneously recovering estimates of unobserved driving safety behavior. The model...

The United States consumed more petroleum-based liquid fuel per capita than any other OECD-high-income country - 30 percent more than the second-highest country (Canada) and 40 percent more than the third-highest (Luxemburg). This paper examines the main channels through which reductions in U.S....

Despite widespread agreement that a carbon tax would be more efficient, many countries use fuel economy standards to reduce transportation-related carbon dioxide emissions. We pair a simple model of the automakers' profit maximization problem with unusually-rich nationally representative data on...

This paper analyzes "attribute-based regulations," in which regulatory compliance depends upon some secondary attribute that is not the intended target of the regulation. For example, in many countries fuel-economy standards mandate that vehicles have a certain fuel economy, but heavier or...