IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/spmain/hal-05407585.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal Nonlinear Deployment Subsidies: Theory and Application to the German Solar Program

Author

Listed:
  • Stefan Pollinger

    (ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

This paper studies the optimal design of nonlinear subsidy schemes for deploying new technologies. Theoretically, it shows that nonlinearities can reduce the fiscal costs of such programs only if adopters' participation responses are heterogeneous along the subsidy schedule. Yet, early-stage technologies typically exhibit limited heterogeneity in this dimension. The insight generalizes to screening problems broadly, and in particular to multidimensional screening à la Rochet and Choné (1998). A quantitative analysis of the canonical German rooftop-solar program demonstrates the theoretical findings. In contrast to the celebrated Sadka-Seade "no-distortion-at-the-top" result, "no-distortion-atthe-bottom" emerges as an actionable policy prescription in this context.

Suggested Citation

  • Stefan Pollinger, 2025. "Optimal Nonlinear Deployment Subsidies: Theory and Application to the German Solar Program," Sciences Po Economics Publications (main) hal-05407585, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:spmain:hal-05407585
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-05407585v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-05407585v1/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:hal:spmain:hal-05407585. 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: Contact - Sciences Po Department of Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.