This paper provides the first estimates of within-industry heterogeneity in energy and CO2 productivity for the entire U.S. manufacturing sector. We measure energy and CO2 productivity as output per dollar energy input or per ton CO2 emitted. Three findings emerge. First, within narrowly defined...

We study the electricity consumption of San Diego-area households following a series of price changes and related events during California's energy crisis in 2000-01. The analysis uses a five-year panel of disaggregate billing and weather data for a random sample of 70,000 households. In...

Recent efforts to restructure and partially deregulate electricity markets have renewed interest in understanding how consumers respond to price changes. Several interrelated problems complicate demand analyses of these markets, including nonlinear pricing, heterogeneity in households' price...

In this paper, we build a version of the putty-clay model in which there is a large variety of types of capital goods which are combined with energy in different fixed proportions. Our principal contribution is to establish easily checked conditions under which the problem of solving for the...

This paper measures the extent to which prices exceed marginal costs in the U.S. natural gas distribution market during the period 1991-2007. We find large departures from marginal cost pricing in all 50 states, with residential and commercial customers facing average markups of over 40%. Based...

Utility regulators frequently focus as much or more on the distributional impact of electric rate structures as on their efficiency. The goal of protecting low-income consumers has become more central with recent increases in wholesale power costs and anticipation of significant costs of...

Starting in the 1970s California's residential electricity consumption per capita stopped increasing, while other states' electricity use continued to grow steadily. Similar patterns can be seen in non-electric energy, industry, and transportation. What accounts for California's apparent energy...

Digital tracking and the proliferation of automated payments have made intermittent billing more commonplace, and the frequency at which consumers receive price, quantity, or total expenditure signals may distort their choices. This category of goods has expanded from household utilities, toll...

We evaluate the effectiveness of energy efficiency labeling in guiding household decisions. Using a carefully designed choice experiment with alternative labels, we disentangle the relative importance of different types of information and intertemporal behavior (i.e., discounting) in guiding...

Improving the efficiency with which we use energy is often said to be the most cost-effective way to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, such improvements usually lower the cost of using energy-intensive goods and may create wealth from the energy savings, both of which lead to...