IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rff/dpaper/dp-16-04.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Fuel Prices, New Vehicle Fuel Economy, and Implications for Attribute-Based Standards

Author

Listed:
  • Leard, Benjamin

    (Resources for the Future)

  • Linn, Joshua

    (FResources for the Future)

  • McConnell, Virginia

    (Resources for the Future)

Abstract

Energy efficiency standards based on product attributes may interact with market conditions and affect the overall stringency of the standards. In this paper we analyze the interaction between gasoline prices and the redesigned and tightened federal fuel economy standards. Tighter standards will tend to reduce the effect of gasoline prices on market shares. Furthermore, under the standards a vehicle’s fuel economy requirement depends on its size. Lower gasoline prices incentivize consumers to purchase new vehicles with lower fuel economy, which are typically larger and therefore face lower fuel economy requirements. Using monthly data from 1996 to 2015, we find that fuel prices have had a smaller effect on market shares in recent years than previously. This result appears to be driven by a stronger response to rising than falling or stable prices. We construct two proxies for the stringency of the standards and we find limited evidence that the standards affect the relationship between fuel prices and market shares. Using the estimated responsiveness to fuel costs from the 2008 to 2015 period, the estimates imply that the 25 percent gasoline price decrease between 2014 and 2015 had a modest effect on average fuel economy and the average fuel economy required by the standards.

Suggested Citation

  • Leard, Benjamin & Linn, Joshua & McConnell, Virginia, 2016. "Fuel Prices, New Vehicle Fuel Economy, and Implications for Attribute-Based Standards," RFF Working Paper Series dp-16-04, Resources for the Future.
  • Handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-16-04
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.rff.org/RFF/documents/RFF-DP-16-04.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. Arik Levinson, 2019. "Energy Efficiency Standards Are More Regressive Than Energy Taxes: Theory and Evidence," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 6(S1), pages 7-36.
    2. Kellogg, Ryan, 2020. "Output and attribute-based carbon regulation under uncertainty," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    3. Yujie Lin & Joshua Linn, 2023. "Environmental Regulation and Product Attributes: The Case of European Passenger Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 10(1), pages 1-32.
    4. Linn, Joshua & McConnell, Virginia, 2019. "Interactions between federal and state policies for reducing vehicle emissions," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 507-517.
    5. Pessoa, Joao Paulo & Santos, Roberto Amaral & Chimeli, Ariaster, 2023. "Natural Gas Vehicles: Consequences to Fuel Markets and the Environment," SocArXiv 7tvgy, Center for Open Science.
    6. Leard, Benjamin & Linn, Joshua & Springel, Katalin, 2019. "Pass-Through and Welfare Effects of Regulations that Affect Product Attributes," RFF Working Paper Series 19-07, Resources for the Future.
    7. Piotr Wróblewski & Wojciech Drożdż & Wojciech Lewicki & Jakub Dowejko, 2021. "Total Cost of Ownership and Its Potential Consequences for the Development of the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Vehicle Market in Poland," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(8), pages 1-25, April.
    8. Doremus, Jacqueline & Helfand, Gloria & Liu, Changzheng & Donahue, Marie & Kahan, Ari & Shelby, Michael, 2019. "Simpler is better: Predicting consumer vehicle purchases in the short run," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 1404-1415.
    9. Sheldon, Tamara L. & Dua, Rubal, 2021. "How responsive is Saudi new vehicle fleet fuel economy to fuel-and vehicle-price policy levers?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    10. Beaudoin, Justin & Chen, Yuan & Heres, David R. & Kheiravar, Khaled H. & Lade, Gabriel E. & Yi, Fujin & Zhang, Wei & Lin Lawell, C.-Y. Cynthia, 2018. "Environmental Policies in the Transportation Sector: Taxes, Subsidies, Mandates, Restrictions, and Investment," ISU General Staff Papers 201808150700001050, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    11. Jain, Prachi & Maitra, Debasish & Kang, Sang Hoon, 2023. "Oil price and the automobile industry: Dynamic connectedness and portfolio implications with downside risk," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    12. Rajesh Sharma & Pradeep Kautish & D. Suresh Kumar, 2021. "Assessing Dynamism of Crude Oil Demand in Middle-Income Countries of South Asia: A Panel Data Investigation," Global Business Review, International Management Institute, vol. 22(1), pages 169-183, February.
    13. 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.
    14. Roberto Amaral-Santos & Ariaster Chimeli & Joao Paulo Pessoa, 2023. "Natural Gas Vehicles: Consequences to Fuel Markets and the Environment," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2023_07, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    15. Kellogg, Ryan, 2018. "Gasoline price uncertainty and the design of fuel economy standards," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 14-32.
    16. Piotr Wróblewski & Wojciech Lewicki, 2021. "A Method of Analyzing the Residual Values of Low-Emission Vehicles Based on a Selected Expert Method Taking into Account Stochastic Operational Parameters," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-24, October.
    17. Leard, Benjamin, 2019. "Estimating Consumer Substitution Between New and Used Passenger Vehicles," RFF Working Paper Series 19-01, Resources for the Future.
    18. Leard, Benjamin & Linn, Joshua & Springel, Katalin, 2023. "Vehicle Attribute Tradeoffs and the Distributional Effects of US Fuel Economy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards," RFF Working Paper Series 23-04, Resources for the Future.
    19. Malina, Christiane, 2016. "The environmental impact of vehicle circulation tax reform in Germany," CAWM Discussion Papers 86, University of Münster, Münster Center for Economic Policy (MEP).
    20. Wang, Yiwei & Miao, Qing, 2021. "The impact of the corporate average fuel economy standards on technological changes in automobile fuel efficiency," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    passenger vehicles; fuel economy standards; gasoline prices;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L62 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - Automobiles; Other Transportation Equipment; Related Parts and Equipment
    • Q4 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy
    • Q5 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics

    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-16-04. 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.