Over the past 30 years, governments have sought to stimulate improvements in new car fuel economy to contribute to air quality, energy security and climate change goals. We analyse the demand for new car fuel economy in the UK using a two-stage econometric model to investigate the drivers of this demand in the short and long run over the period 1970-2004.We find that higher incomes and long run price changes are the main drivers to achieve improvements in fuel economy particularly for gasoline cars; and that new car fuel economy changes were scarcely induced by the Voluntary Agreement on CO2 emissions reductions adopted in the 1990s. We find that the demand for fuel economy is price inelastic for both fuels, in agreement with other studies. Our calculated long run income elasticity (gasoline with -0.31 and diesel fuels with -0.20) values are above the range of international studies for gasoline but within the range for diesel.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: Q2 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation Q4 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy R4 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - Transportation Systems
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