{"title":"Evaluating Behaviorally-Motivated Policy: Experimental Evidence from the Lightbulb Market","authors":"Hunt Allcott, Dmitry Taubinsky","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2676158","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Imperfect information and inattention to energy costs are important potential motivations for energy efficiency standards and subsidies. We evaluate these motivations in the lightbulb market using a theoretical model and two randomized experiments. We derive welfare effects as functions of reduced-form sufficient statistics capturing economic and psychological parameters, which we estimate using a novel within-subject information disclosure experiment. The main results suggest that moderate subsidies for energy-efficient lightbulbs may increase welfare, but informational and attentional biases alone do not justify a ban on incandescent lightbulbs. Our results and techniques generate broader methodological insights into welfare analysis with misoptimizing consumers. (JEL D12, D83, H21, H31, L67, Q41, Q48)","PeriodicalId":172652,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Market Structure (Topic)","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2014-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"378","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"ERN: Market Structure (Topic)","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2676158","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 378
Abstract
Imperfect information and inattention to energy costs are important potential motivations for energy efficiency standards and subsidies. We evaluate these motivations in the lightbulb market using a theoretical model and two randomized experiments. We derive welfare effects as functions of reduced-form sufficient statistics capturing economic and psychological parameters, which we estimate using a novel within-subject information disclosure experiment. The main results suggest that moderate subsidies for energy-efficient lightbulbs may increase welfare, but informational and attentional biases alone do not justify a ban on incandescent lightbulbs. Our results and techniques generate broader methodological insights into welfare analysis with misoptimizing consumers. (JEL D12, D83, H21, H31, L67, Q41, Q48)