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A tale of two tails: Commuting and the fuel price response in driving

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  • Gillingham, Kenneth
  • Munk-Nielsen, Anders

Abstract

Pricing greenhouse gases is widely understood as the most efficient approach for mitigating climate change, yet distributional effects hamper political acceptance. These distributional effects are especially important in transport, the fastest growing sector for greenhouse gas emissions. Using rich data covering the entire population of vehicles and households in Denmark, this study uncovers an important feature of driving demand: two groups of much more responsive households in the lower and upper tails of the work distance distribution. We further estimate the causal effect of public transport–a critical determinant of the upper tail–and show how public transport access can both reconcile differences in fuel price elasticities between the United States and Europe, and considerably influence the distributional effects of fuel pricing.

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  • Gillingham, Kenneth & Munk-Nielsen, Anders, 2019. "A tale of two tails: Commuting and the fuel price response in driving," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 27-40.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:juecon:v:109:y:2019:i:c:p:27-40
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jue.2018.09.007
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    6. Gustav Engström & Johan Gars & Niko Jaakkola & Therese Lindahl & Daniel Spiro & Arthur A. van Benthem, 2020. "What Policies Address Both the Coronavirus Crisis and the Climate Crisis?," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 76(4), pages 789-810, August.
    7. Alberini, Anna & Horvath, Marco & Vance, Colin, 2021. "Drive less, drive better, or both? Behavioral adjustments to fuel price changes in Germany," Ruhr Economic Papers 892, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    8. Harju, Jarkko & Kosonen, Tuomas & Laukkanen, Marita & Palanne, Kimmo, 2022. "The heterogeneous incidence of fuel carbon taxes: Evidence from station-level data," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    9. Sulikova, Simona & van den Bijgaart, Inge & Klenert, David & Mattauch, Linus, 2020. "Optimal fuel taxation with suboptimal health choices," Working Papers in Economics 794, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    10. Kenneth Gillingham & Fedor Iskhakov & Anders Munk-Nielsen & John Rust & Bertel Schjerning, 2019. "Equilibrium trade in automobile markets," CESifo Working Paper Series 7650, CESifo.
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    13. Matsushima, Hiroshi & Khanna, Madhu, 2022. "Estimating Medium-run Direct Rebound Effects of the Footprint-based CAFE Standard," 2022 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Anaheim, California 322420, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    14. Alberini, Anna & Horvath, Marco & Vance, Colin, 2022. "Drive less, drive better, or both? Behavioral adjustments to fuel price changes in Germany," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    15. Leroutier, Marion & Quirion, Philippe, 2023. "Tackling Car Emissions in Urban Areas: Shift, Avoid, Improve," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    16. Craglia, Matteo & Cullen, Jonathan, 2020. "Do vehicle efficiency improvements lead to energy savings? The rebound effect in Great Britain," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    17. Randall Wigle, 2019. "The Economic Case for EV Supports? Or: Network Effects, EV Pessimism and EV Supports," LCERPA Working Papers ec0123, Laurier Centre for Economic Research and Policy Analysis, revised 23 Oct 2019.
    18. Fanying Zheng & Fu Gu & Wujie Zhang & Jianfeng Guo, 2019. "Is Bicycle Sharing an Environmental Practice? Evidence from a Life Cycle Assessment Based on Behavioral Surveys," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-25, March.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Distributional effects; Transportation; Commuting; Urban form; Environmental taxes;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R4 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics
    • R2 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis
    • Q4 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy
    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • L9 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities

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