Suchergebnisse

Nonlinear pricing and taxation complicate economic decisions by creating multiple marginal prices for the same good. This paper provides a framework to uncover consumers' perceived price of nonlinear price schedules. I exploit price variation at spatial discontinuities in electricity service areas, where households in the same city experience substantially different nonlinear pricing. Using household-level panel data from administrative records, I find strong evidence that consumers respond to average price rather than marginal or expected marginal price. This suboptimizing behavior makes nonlinear pricing unsuccessful in achieving its policy goal of energy conservation and critically changes the welfare implications of nonlinear pricing. (JEL D12, L11, L94, L98, Q41)

We develop a framework to characterize strategic behavior in sequential markets under imperfect competition and restricted entry in arbitrage. Our theory predicts that these two elements can generate a systematic price premium. We test the model predictions using microdata from the Iberian electricity market. We show that the observed price differences and firm behavior are consistent with the model. Finally, we quantify the welfare effects of arbitrage using a structural model. In the presence of market power, we show that full arbitrage is not necessarily welfare-enhancing, reducing consumer costs but increasing deadweight loss. (JEL D42, D43, L12, L13, L94, Q41)

Part I Smart Grid Economics -- Chapter 1 Economics of Smart Grid: Smart Grid, Time-dependent Pricing (Dynamic Pricing), Demand Response -- Part II Field Experimental Economics -- Chapter 2 Economics of Field Experiment: History of Field Experiment, especially in Energy and Environmental Economics -- Chapter 3 Dynamic Pricing: Purpose, Design, and Results of Field Experiment of Dynamic Pricing -- Chapter 4 Persistence and Habit Formation: Short-term and Long-term Effects of Conservation Request and Dynamic Pricing -- Chapter 5 Switching Cost and Information Friction: Status Quo Bias and Cognitive Incompleteness of Behavioral Change -- Chapter 6 Social Welfare Analysis: Cost-Benefit Ratio of Installing Smart Grid System -- Part III Toward Power System Restructuring -- Chapter 7 Power System Restructuring and Smart Grids.

We study a problem in which policymakers need to screen self-selected individuals by unobserved heterogeneity in social welfare gains from a policy intervention. In our framework, the marginal treatment effects and marginal treatment responses arise as key statistics to characterize social welfare. We apply this framework to a randomized field experiment on electricity plan choice. Consumers were offered welfare-improving dynamic pricing with randomly assigned take-up incentives. We find that price-elastic consumers—who generate larger welfare gains—are more likely to self-select. Our counterfactual simulations quantify the optimal take-up incentives that exploit observed and unobserved heterogeneity in selection and welfare gains. (JEL C93, D12, L11, L94, L98)