Little is known about electric vehicle (EV) demand by low- and middle-income households. In this paper, we exploit a policy that provides exogenous variation in large EV subsidies targeted at the mass market in California. Using transaction-level data, we estimate three important policy...

Transportation electrification is viewed by many as a cornerstone for climate change mitigation, with the ultimate vision to phase out conventional vehicles entirely. In a world with only electric vehicles (EVs), transportation pollution would be primarily determined by the electricity grid...

The canonical theory of taxation holds that the incidence of a tax is independent of the side of the market which is responsible for remitting the tax to the government. However, this prediction does not survive in certain circumstances, for example when the ability to evade taxes differs across...

This paper presents experimental evidence that information feedback dramatically increases the price elasticity of demand in a setting where signals about quantity consumed are traditionally coarse and infrequent. In a randomized controlled trial, residential electricity customers are exposed to...

This paper compares marginal and average tax rates on working and saving under our current federal tax system with those that would arise under a federal retail sales tax, specifically the FairTax. The FairTax would replace the personal income, corporate income, payroll, and estate and gift...

Recent empirical work in several economic fields, particularly environmental and energy economics, has adapted the regression discontinuity (RD) framework to applications where time is the running variable and treatment begins at a particular threshold in time. In this guide for practitioners,...

In the United States, consumers invest billions of dollars annually in energy efficiency, often on the assumption that these investments will pay for themselves via future energy cost reductions. We study energy efficiency upgrades in K-12 schools in California. We develop and implement a novel...

Do regular 401(k) and IRA accounts offer greater tax benefits than Roth 401(k)s and Roth IRAs? This is a tough question. Regular 401(k)s and IRAs save taxes in the short term; Roth accounts save taxes in the long term. Regular 401(k)s and IRAs are vulnerable to future income tax hikes, but may...

Building on Gokhale, Kotlikoff, and Sluchynsky's (2002) study of Americans' incentives to work full or part time, this paper uses ESPlanner, a life-cycle financial planning program, in conjunction with detailed modeling of transfer programs to determine a) total marginal net tax rates on current...

Household preferences for goods with a bundle of attributes may have complex substitution patterns when one attribute is changed. For example, a household faced with an exogenous increase in the size of one television may choose to decrease the size of other televisions within the home. This...