IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/renvpo/doi10.1093-reep-rez015.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Rebound Effect and the Proposed Rollback of U.S. Fuel Economy Standards

Author

Listed:
  • Kenneth T. Gillingham

Abstract

The Trump administration’s August 2018 proposed rollback of the 2020–2026 fuel economy standards has been the subject of great controversy in the policy community. The justification for the rollback was based on an analysis indicating that the previous fuel economy standards would be associated with more than 12,000 additional fatalities over the lifetime of the vehicles affected by the standards. The largest contributor to these estimated fatalities is the rebound effect assumed in the analysis, which was increased from 10 percent in the previous rule to 20 percent in the proposed rule. This article summarizes the current state of knowledge about the rebound effect as it relates specifically to fuel economy standards. A careful review of the recent literature supports a central estimate closer to 10 percent, thus undermining a key argument that has been used to support the rollback of the standards. However, there are wide bounds of uncertainty around this central estimate as well as several poorly understood factors not accounted for in the central estimates, which further increase our uncertainty about the rebound effect. This highlights the importance of sensitivity analysis and further research on this policy-relevant topic.

Suggested Citation

  • Kenneth T. Gillingham, 2020. "The Rebound Effect and the Proposed Rollback of U.S. Fuel Economy Standards," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 14(1), pages 136-142.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:renvpo:doi:10.1093/reep/rez015
    DOI: 10.1093/reep/rez015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/reep/rez015
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/reep/rez015
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1093/reep/rez015?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kellogg, Ryan, 2020. "Output and attribute-based carbon regulation under uncertainty," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    2. Lu, Tingmingke, 2023. "Response of new car buyers to alternative energy policies: The role of vehicle use heterogeneity," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    3. 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.
    4. Sakar Hasan Hamza & Qingna Li, 2023. "The Dynamics of US Gasoline Demand and Its Prediction: An Extended Dynamic Model Averaging Approach," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(12), pages 1-13, June.
    5. Malmaeus, Mikael & Hasselström, Linus & Mellin, Anna & Nyblom, Åsa & Åkerman, Jonas, 2023. "Addressing rebound effects in transport policy – Insights from exploring five case studies," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 45-55.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:renvpo:doi:10.1093/reep/rez015. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/REEP .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.