IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rff/dpaper/dp-10-56.html

Is There an Energy Paradox in Fuel Economy? A Note on the Role of Consumer Heterogeneity and Sorting Bias

Author

Listed:
  • Bento, Antonio M.
  • Li, Shanjun

    (Resources for the Future)

  • Roth, Kevin

Abstract

Previous literature finds that consumers tend to undervalue discounted future energy costs in their purchase decisions for energy-using durables. We argue that this finding could result from ignoring consumer heterogeneity in empirical analyses as opposed to true undervaluation. In the context of automobile demand, we show that, if not accounted for, consumer heterogeneity could lead to sorting, which in turn biases toward zero the estimate of marginal willingness to pay for discounted future fuel costs.

Suggested Citation

  • Bento, Antonio M. & Li, Shanjun & Roth, Kevin, 2010. "Is There an Energy Paradox in Fuel Economy? A Note on the Role of Consumer Heterogeneity and Sorting Bias," RFF Working Paper Series dp-10-56, Resources for the Future.
    • Handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-10-56
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.rff.org/RFF/documents/RFF-DP-10-56.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government Policy
    • L91 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Transportation: General

    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:rff:dpaper:dp-10-56. 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: Resources for the Future (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rffffus.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.