Agricultural & Resource Economics
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Item Essays in Personal Transportation Demand and Consumer Finance(2016) Evans, Jaclyn; Williams, Roberton C; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is composed of three essays covering two areas of interest. The first topic is personal transportation demand with a focus on price and fuel efficiency elasticities of mileage demand, challenging assumptions common in the rebound effect literature. The second topic is consumer finance with a focus on small loans. The first chapter creates separate variables for fuel prices during periods of increasing and decreasing prices as well as an observed fuel economy measure to empirically test the equivalence of these elasticities. Using a panel from Germany from 1997 to 2009 I find a fuel economy elasticity of mileage of 53.3%, which is significantly different from the gas price elasticity of mileage during periods of decreasing gas prices, 4.8%. I reject the null hypothesis or price symmetry, with the elasticity of mileage during period of increasing gas prices ranging from 26.2% and 28.9%. The second chapter explores the potential for the rebound effect to vary with income. Panel data from U.S. households from 1997 to 2003 is used to estimate the rebound effect in a median regression. The estimated rebound effect independent of income ranges from 17.8% to 23.6%. An interaction of income and fuel economy is negative and significant, indicating that the rebound effect may be much higher for low income individuals and decreases with income; the rebound effect for low income households ranged from 80.3% to 105.0%, indicating that such households may increase gasoline consumption given an improvement in fuel economy. The final chapter documents the costs of credit instruments found in major mail order catalogs throughout the 20th century. This study constructs a new dataset and finds that the cost of credit increased and became stickier as mail order retailers switched from an installment-style closed-end loan to a revolving-style credit card. This study argues that revolving credit's ability to decrease salience of credit costs in the price of goods is the best explanation for rate stickiness in the mail order industry as well as for the preference of revolving credit among retailers.Item ESSAYS ON ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND FOREST CONSERVATION(2015) Maher, Joseph Andrew; Just, Richard; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is composed of three essays in environmental economics related to residential energy efficiency and forest conservation. My first paper assesses the effectiveness of energy-efficient technologies in the setting of a utility rebate program. To date, the energy savings from energy-efficiency building retrofits are assessed using ex-ante engineering models. My analysis provides the first evaluation of engineering models that uses residential billing data, combined with data on observable characteristics of each residence, to assess the accuracy of engineering predictions across nine retrofit technologies used in Gainesville, Florida. My second essay presents the first causal evidence that trees have a major impact on consumer demand—with large shade trees reducing household electricity use by more than 20 percent. This work contributes to the existing literature on the energy saving potential of urban forests by implementing a quasi-experimental design to identify a causal link between tree shade and energy use. Results suggest that the energy savings from tree shade are an order of magnitude greater than other energy-efficiency policy measures, providing new evidence that tree ordinances may serve as effective demand-side management policies. My third essay assesses the effectiveness of forest conservation policies in reducing carbon emissions from deforestation. To date, the effectiveness of protected areas has been assessed using cross-sectional methods. In this essay, new quasi-experimental models using panel data on annual deforestation are used to reveal new insights into the importance of government oversight of protected areas with findings that counter economists’ prior notions of the avoided deforestation of new parks. I extend the analysis to estimate avoided carbon emissions, a key policy metric that varies considerably from deforestation trends.Item Modeling Household Energy Consumption and Adoption of Energy-efficient Technology Using Recent Micro-data(2011) Li, Jia; Just, Richard E; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study develops a unified technology choice and energy consumption model (a "discrete/continuous model") that can be applied to study household energy use behavior. The model, stemming from consumer theory, ensures modeling of consumer short-run energy demand and long-run capital investment decisions in a mutually consistent manner. The model adopts a second-order translog flexible functional form that allows considerable flexibility in the structure of consumer preferences and in the exploration of interplays among energy uses and between energy demand and appliance choices. This study extends the discrete/continuous model developed by Dubin and McFadden (1984) and is the first known application of the second-order translog flexible functional form in joint discrete/continuous modeling of consumer energy demand and appliance choice. Using a unique household-level dataset of 2,408 households served by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company in California, the model is applied to examine the roles of income, prices, household characteristics, and energy and environmental policy in household short-run energy use and long-run technology choices. The empirical analysis estimates a system of short-run household demand equations for electricity and natural gas and long-run technology choices with respect to clothes washing, water heating, space heating, and clothes drying. The results demonstrate the modeling framework is appropriate and robust in studying household energy use behavior. Findings from the empirical analysis have important implications for policy design. This study confirms two important market failures with respect to household energy technology choice behavior: the principal/agent problem and information imperfection. In the case of clothes washer choices, the voluntary, information-based Energy Star program emerges as the most significant factor influencing the adoption of energy-efficient front-loading clothes washers, followed by energy efficiency standards. Surprisingly, financial incentives, such as the popular rebate programs used to lower the initial capital cost of energy-efficient appliances, are found to be far less effective in influencing adoption of energy-efficient appliances. Furthermore, the study finds at the household level that the incentive for new technology adoption is greater under direct regulation than under market-based instruments, such as a carbon cap-and-trade program or emission taxes.