This dissertation consists of three essays on the energy efficiency and pricing behavior of firms in the U.S. automobile market with a focus on Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs). The first essay analyzes the market share of HEVs and evaluates consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for future fuel cost savings by purchasing fuel efficient HEVs. Estimates of consumers' WTP for future fuel cost savings and the finding of an implicit discount rate of 8.35%~14.35% suggest that consumers undervalue future fuel cost savings from purchasing HEVs, and that consumers want a return on their investment on fuel cost saving HEV technology in 7~11 years. The second essay empirically investigates the existence of quality-based price discrimination in the U.S. automobile market. By estimating a structural model of demand and supply in the automobile market, I can recover marginal costs, markups and percentage markups for all vehicle models sold between 2000 and 2013. The extent of price discrimination is then examined by comparing markup and percentage markup differences between HEVs and gasoline vehicles. The results demonstrate that automobile manufactures charge both higher markups and higher percentage markups on their HEV models. On average, HEVs have higher markups by 11.1% compared to gasoline vehicles, and Toyota, a leader in the HEV market, charges higher markups on their HEV models compared to other manufacturers. The Toyota Prius, the top-selling hybrid car in the U.S. market, particularly enjoys a higher markup and percentage markup than other competitive vehicles. The third essay provides a model of the automobile market where consumers have heterogeneous preferences, caring about both the environment and the physical quality of the product--specifically its fuel economy. Many of the results found by the model are to be expected: consumers buy fewer vehicles when the environmental damages (emissions) and prices of vehicles increase; more vehicles are sold when vehicles are equipped with better fuel technology; and consumers buy fewer vehicles as they become more pro-environmental. One unexpected finding stands out: a tax on gasoline vehicles always decreases total emissions, while a subsidy for environmentally friendly HEV adoption may not.

This dissertation studies the household-level demand model for water and electricity, with the three chapters focusing on different aspects of the demand model. The first chapter, co-authored with my advisor, Frank Wolak, formulates and estimates a household-level, billing-cycle water demand model under increasing block prices that accounts for the impact of monthly weather variation, the amount of vegetation on the household's property, and customer-level heterogeneity in demand due to household demographics. The model utilizes US Census data on the distribution of household demographics in the utility's service territory to recover the impact of these factors on water demand. An index of the amount of vegetation on the household's property is obtained from NASA satellite data. The household-level demand models are used to compute the distribution of utility-level water demand and revenues for any possible price schedule. It can be used to design nonlinear pricing plans that achieve competing revenue or water conservation goals, which is crucial for water utilities to manage increasingly uncertain water availability yet still remain financially viable. Knowledge of how these demands differ across customers based on observable household characteristics can allow the utility to reduce the utility-wide revenue or sales risk it faces for any pricing plan. Knowledge of how the structure of demand varies across customers can be used to design personalized (based on observable household demographic characteristics) increasing block price schedules to further reduce the risk the utility faces on a system-wide basis. For the utilities considered, knowledge of the customer-level demographics that predict demand differences across households reduces the uncertainty in the utility's system-wide revenues from 22 to 84 percent. Further reductions in the uncertainty in the utility's system-wide revenues, in the range of 10 to 79 percent, are possible by re-designing the utility's nonlinear price schedules to minimize the revenue risk it faces given the distribution of household-level demand in its service territory. The second chapter, co-authored with Frank again, estimates a model of the household-level demand for electricity services such as lighting, heating and cooling, home appliances, and business use in the Indian state of Rajasthan using a combination of household-level survey data and administrative data. This model incorporates customer-level demographic characteristics, billing cycle-level weather variables, and the fact that households are subject to electricity outages and face increasing block price schedules for their electricity consumption. We estimate two versions of the model that differ in how the relationship between electricity use and consumption of each electricity service is modeled. The first model uses a shape-constrained kernel regression and the second model uses a customer-level constant elasticity of electricity consumption with respect to energy service model. Both energy service demand models produce estimates of the response of each of the above four categories of energy services to changes in the price of each energy service. Both versions of the model also produce estimates of the marginal willingness to pay for an additional hour of each of the four categories of energy services. The mean marginal willingness to pay across customers for an additional hour an energy service is the smallest for lighting and the largest for home appliance services. The third chapter studies whether consumers respond to increasing block tariffs. Although increasing block tariffs have been widely adopted by water and electricity utilities, some previous literature claims that consumers only respond to the average price, rather than the increasing block tariffs or the marginal price. In this chapter, we examine the empirical strategies proposed by previous literature, and test whether they are sufficient to conclude if consumers respond to the increasing block tariffs or other perceived prices. We utilize the household-level demand model in the first chapter that responds to the entire price schedule, including all price tiers and quantity cutoffs. We construct a dataset with consumption data simulated using this model. Applying empirical strategies proposed by previous literature to the simulated dataset fails to identify the underlying demand model, and still concludes that consumers respond to the average price. This suggests that current empirical evidences are not sufficient to exclude that consumers respond to the increasing block tariffs. Further investigations are needed to understand the water/electricity consumption decision.

This dissertation combines research on three topics in applied energy economics. The first two papers investigate whether consumers are informed about and pay attention to energy costs in residential housing. The first paper explores this issue in the rental housing market, while the second paper focuses on housing purchases. The third paper, based on joint work with AJ Bostian and Harrison Fell, uses a laboratory experiment to test the effects of positive versus negative cost shocks on mulit-unit procurement auction performance. The first paper explores whether there are energy cost information asymmetries between landlords and tenants. If tenants are uninformed about energy costs, landlords cannot capitalize energy efficiency investments into higher rents, leading to under-investment. I exploit variation in energy costs in the form of relative heating fuel price changes in the northeastern United States where some apartment units heat with oil and some units heat with natural gas. I develop a search model to describe the matching of landlords and tenants, and derive predictions about the incidence of relative fuel price changes, tenant turnover, and efficiency investments under both symmetric and asymmetric information. My model predicts that, under symmetric full information, these outcomes will not differ depending on whether landlords or tenants pay for energy. In contrast, under asymmetric information, the demand of uninformed tenants for units that heat with oil rather than gas will not shift when oil prices rise relative to gas prices. In a search model, this leads to different market outcomes when landlords, rather than tenants, pay for energy. I find that the capitalization of energy prices into rents, turnover rates, and energy efficiency investments differ between the two payment regimes in ways that are consistent with asymmetric information. The second paper explores whether home buyers are myopic about future energy costs. I exploit variation in energy costs in the form of fuel price changes in Massachusetts where there is an even distribution of homes that heat with oil and homes that heat with natural gas. I find that relative fuel price shifts cause relative changes in housing transaction prices that are consistent with full capitalization of the present value of future energy cost differences under low discount rates. These findings are consistent with home buyers being attentive to energy costs at point of sale and are not consistent with myopia. The third paper uses a laboratory experiment to test the effects of positive versus negative costs shocks on multi-unit procurement auction performance. Output prices tend to respond more quickly to increases in input prices than to decreases in input prices. While standard economic theory would not predict this pattern, it is found in many market settings. We compare outcomes in uniform price and discriminatory (pay-as-bid) auctions for two different kinds of costs shocks. First we look at ``industry wide'' cost shocks where the cost of a common input changes uniformly for all bidders. We also look at idiosyncratic cost shocks, where bidders' individual costs are changing, but the expected Walrasian price remains fixed. We find evidence for a new explanation of asymmetric passthrough in multi-unit procurement auctions related to the bidding incentives in discriminatory auctions. Discriminatory auctions may be worse than uniform at ``tracking'' shifts in underlying costs, leading to price adjustment asymmetries and production inefficiencies.

This volume is a collection of essays that provide a comprehensive coverage of multiple aspects of the discourse on environment, development and sustainability. It is designed to bring in a host of perspectives highlighting the synergies and the trade-offs in this debate, showcasing research along with policy implications of putting research into use. The global discussion on sustainability paints the broad canvas for this book. This volume aims to probe some contemporary issues that will help in understanding the sustainability narrative in India. The topics span over a host of questions on energy, environment, natural resources and related constituents of development. The discourse further extends to the role of economic modelling, public policy debates, political intervention, stakeholders’ response, community participation and so on. The discussions are often based on empirical support, review of existing literature as well as policy analysis. With an ultimate aim to understand the overall development narrative of the people of India, the discourse takes in its ambit the nuances of resource utilisation, economic growth, COVID-19 impacts, competitiveness and market structures, urbanization, sectoral reforms, environmental hazards, climate change, pollution, natural resource accounting and management to name a few. The book is divided into four sections, namely, The Big Picture: Evolving Perspectives; The Energy Scenario: Dilemmas and Opportunities; Sustainability Cross-Cuts: Developmental Aspects and Externality Empirics: Knowledge and Practice. The first section contains commentaries on the overarching themes of economic growth, development and sustainability. It presents some emerging perspectives on the developmental crisis that has emerged through the environmental lens with additional focus on the need for inclusion of creativity, knowhow, technology and financial resources to achieve the ambitious SDG targets. The second section brings out the dilemmas and opportunities in the energy sector, that has been a key player in discussions of sustainability, especially for India where significant technological advances in conventional forms of energy supply coexists with fairly low levels of per capita energy consumption and energy security is a key challenge. The section on sustainability crosscuts attempts to highlight the problems and processes of mainstreaming the sustainability question into conventional thinking through the concepts of a circular economy, green accounting techniques, institutional and governance structures, public policy and inclusive growth, amongst others. The last section presents some empirical studies on environmental externalities, the unaccounted environmental effects of economic production and consumption and finally the behavioural aspects of the stakeholders that are crucial in the larger narrative of sustainable development. This edited volume contains contributions of reputed scholars from various Indian universities, research institutions and professionals from outside academia, who are proven experts in their fields. The link between policy, practice, and well-being of the large vulnerable population of India is the major focus of enquiry that will help researchers, practitioners and policy planners in conducting further research in energy, environment, resource and linked areas of development economics. General readers with an active interest in energy, environment, and economic development are also likely to find this book an interesting read, especially in the times of several environmental challenges facing humankind.

Th Accelerating the diffusion of energy-efficient renovations is a key policy lever in order to reduce the environmental impact of buildings. This book provides a broad, systemic perspective on the causes of the diffusion of energy-efficient renovations in Switzerland and policy recommendations for accelerating the diffusion process. Specifically, the book provides a description of the societal problem situation within which the diffusion process takes place and an analysis of the actors involved. It provides a detailed explanation of the causes of the diffusion process that synthesizes insights from the engineering, economics, marketing, sociology, communication studies and political science literature. It employs the System Dynamics methodology to simulate the diffusion process and analyze policy levers. The book proposes two regulations and a sketch of a business model as particularly promising public policy interventions. It concludes with an outline of a generic theory of the diffusion of sustainable technologies.

Teaches students to write well and introduces them to quality classic and contemporary essays. Now revised and updated.

Outlining how the concepts of green economy and green growth have become the forefront of policy and political debates within the last decade, this compelling Research Handbook investigates the policies and plans that utilise these concepts at both the local and global level to achieve a truly green economy. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.