IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/19736.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Economic Cost of Global Fuel Subsidies

Author

Listed:
  • Lucas W. Davis

Abstract

By 2015, global oil consumption will reach 90 million barrels per day. In part, this high level of consumption reflects the fact that many countries provide subsidies for gasoline and diesel. This paper examines global fuel subsidies using the latest available data from the World Bank, finding that road-sector subsidies for gasoline and diesel totaled $110 billion in 2012. Pricing fuels below cost is inefficient because it leads to overconsumption. Under baseline assumptions about supply and demand elasticities, the total annual deadweight loss worldwide is $44 billion. Incorporating external costs increases the economic costs substantially.

Suggested Citation

  • Lucas W. Davis, 2013. "The Economic Cost of Global Fuel Subsidies," NBER Working Papers 19736, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:19736
    Note: EEE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w19736.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christopher R. Knittel, 2012. "Reducing Petroleum Consumption from Transportation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(1), pages 93-118, Winter.
    2. Gately, Dermot & Al-Yousef, Nourah & Al-Sheikh, Hamad M.H., 2012. "The rapid growth of domestic oil consumption in Saudi Arabia and the opportunity cost of oil exports foregone," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 57-68.
    3. James D. Hamilton, 2009. "Understanding Crude Oil Prices," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2), pages 179-206.
    4. Brons, Martijn & Nijkamp, Peter & Pels, Eric & Rietveld, Piet, 2008. "A meta-analysis of the price elasticity of gasoline demand. A SUR approach," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 2105-2122, September.
    5. Ian W. H. Parry & Kenneth A. Small, 2005. "Does Britain or the United States Have the Right Gasoline Tax?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1276-1289, September.
    6. Ian W. H. Parry & Margaret Walls & Winston Harrington, 2007. "Automobile Externalities and Policies," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(2), pages 373-399, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lucas W. Davis, 2017. "The Environmental Cost of Global Fuel Subsidies," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(KAPSARC S).
    2. Gustavo A. Marrero & Jesús Rodríguez-López & Rosa Marina González, 2020. "Car usage, $${\text {CO}}_{2}$$CO2 emissions and fuel taxes in Europe," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 203-241, June.
    3. Lucas W. Davis & James M. Sallee, 2020. "Should Electric Vehicle Drivers Pay a Mileage Tax?," Environmental and Energy Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(1), pages 65-94.
    4. Cook, Jonathan A. & Sanchirico, James N. & Salon, Deborah & Williams, Jeffrey, 2015. "Empirical distributions of vehicle use and fuel efficiency across space: Implications of asymmetry for measuring policy incidence," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 187-199.
    5. Georg Hirte & Stefan Tscharaktschiew, 2015. "Optimal Fuel Taxes and Heterogeneity of Cities," Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, Springer;Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR), vol. 35(2), pages 173-209, October.
    6. Tscharaktschiew, Stefan, 2014. "Shedding light on the appropriateness of the (high) gasoline tax level in Germany," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 189-210.
    7. Jesús Rodríguez-López & Gustavo A. Marrero & Rosa Marina González-Marrero, 2015. "Dieselization, CO2 emissions and fuel taxes in Europe," Working Papers 15.11, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics.
    8. Schleiniger, Reto, 2016. "Implicit CO2 prices of fossil fuel use in Switzerland," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 411-420.
    9. Madowitz, M. & Novan, K., 2013. "Gasoline taxes and revenue volatility: An application to California," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 663-673.
    10. Bergeaud, Antonin & Raimbault, Juste, 2020. "An empirical analysis of the spatial variability of fuel prices in the United States," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 131-143.
    11. Proost, Stef & Van Dender, Kurt, 2012. "Energy and environment challenges in the transport sector," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 77-87.
    12. Tscharaktschiew, Stefan & Reimann, Felix, 2021. "On employer-paid parking and parking (cash-out) policy: A formal synthesis of different perspectives," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 499-516.
    13. Philippe Aghion & Antoine Dechezleprêtre & David Hémous & Ralf Martin & John Van Reenen, 2016. "Carbon Taxes, Path Dependency, and Directed Technical Change: Evidence from the Auto Industry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(1), pages 1-51.
    14. Charles Raux, 2011. "Downstream Emissions Trading for Transport," Transportation Research, Economics and Policy, in: Werner Rothengatter & Yoshitsugu Hayashi & Wolfgang Schade (ed.), Transport Moving to Climate Intelligence, chapter 0, pages 209-226, Springer.
    15. Shanjun Li & Joshua Linn & Erich Muehlegger, 2014. "Gasoline Taxes and Consumer Behavior," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 6(4), pages 302-342, November.
    16. Gilles Duranton & Geetika Nagpal & Matthew A. Turner, 2020. "Transportation Infrastructure in the US," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Analysis and Infrastructure Investment, pages 165-210, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Rik L. Rozendaal & Herman R. J. Vollebergh, 2021. "Policy-Induced Innovation in Clean Technologies: Evidence from the Car Market," CESifo Working Paper Series 9422, CESifo.
    18. Donna, Javier D., 2018. "Measuring Long-Run Price Elasticities in Urban Travel Demand," MPRA Paper 90059, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Geir H. M. Bjertnæs, 2019. "Efficient taxation of fuel and road use," Discussion Papers 905, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    20. Philippe Barla & Bernard Lamonde & Luis Miranda-Moreno & Nathalie Boucher, 2009. "Traveled distance, stock and fuel efficiency of private vehicles in Canada: price elasticities and rebound effect," Transportation, Springer, vol. 36(4), pages 389-402, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • Q41 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Demand and Supply; Prices
    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government Policy
    • Q51 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Valuation of Environmental Effects

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:19736. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.