IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/22983.html

Fuel Consumption and Gasoline Prices: The Role of Assortative Matching between Households and Automobiles

Author

Listed:
  • H. Spencer Banzhaf
  • Taha Kasim

Abstract

Analyses of policies to reduce gasoline consumption have focused on two effects, a compositional effect on the fuel economy of the automotive fleet and a utilization effect on how much people drive. However, the literature has missed a third effect: a matching effect, in which the policy changes how high-utilization households are matched to fuel-efficient vehicles in equilibrium. We show that higher gas prices should lead to stronger assortative matching. Empirical estimates using US micro-level data are consistent with this hypothesis. We find a $1 gas tax would reduce US gas consumption by 1.5% through the matching effect alone.

Suggested Citation

  • H. Spencer Banzhaf & Taha Kasim, 2016. "Fuel Consumption and Gasoline Prices: The Role of Assortative Matching between Households and Automobiles," NBER Working Papers 22983, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22983
    Note: EEE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w22983.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    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. Arik Levinson & Lutz Sager, 2023. "Who Values Future Energy Savings? Evidence from American Drivers," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 10(3), pages 717-751.
    4. Cui, Yuepeng & Xu, Hao & Zou, Fumin & Chen, Zhihui & Gong, Kuangmin, 2021. "Optimization based method to develop representative driving cycle for real-world fuel consumption estimation," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 235(C).
    5. Greene, David L. & Sims, Charles B. & Muratori, Matteo, 2020. "Two trillion gallons: Fuel savings from fuel economy improvements to US light-duty vehicles, 1975–2018," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    6. 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.
    7. Xu, Lei & Chen, Jingrui & Qu, Fang & Wang, Jue & Lu, Yi, 2022. "Queuing to refuel before price rise in China: How do gasoline price changes affect consumer responses and behaviours?," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 253(C).
    8. Strittmatter, Anthony & Lechner, Michael, 2020. "Sorting in the used-car market after the Volkswagen emission scandal," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    9. Avetisyan, Misak & Wilson, Wesley W., 2025. "Transport emissions, carbon taxes, and modal choice," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • Q4 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy
    • Q5 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics

    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:22983. 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: 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.