Three Essays on Energy and Environmental Economics

Energy Economics;Environmental Economics;Economics;Business and Economics;Economics

Cassidy, AleciaSmith, Jeffrey Andrew ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Energy Economics;    Environmental Economics;    Economics;    Business and Economics;    Economics;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/146033/aawaite_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

This dissertation examines how housing markets react to information on energy and the environment and how residential investment in air conditioners responds to hot weather.Chapter 1 examines energy efficiency disclosure in residential housing markets. Energy efficiency disclosure is an increasingly popular policy tool that has the potential to address market failures due to imperfect information in housing markets. However, there is little evidence that these policies increase capitalization of energy efficiency. This paper examines the effects of a mandatory energy efficiency disclosure policy on housing prices in Austin, Texas. I compare prices before and after the introduction of the policy for homes with different levels of energy efficiency features. I find that the policy increased capitalization of several energy efficiency features, and that the increase was larger for features that were more difficult to observe before the policy. The results highlight the important role of mandatory information disclosure policies in increasing the returns to energy efficiency investments by homeowners.Chapter 2 studies consumers;; investment decisions for cooling equipment. Adaptation is a necessary approach to dealing with the effects of climate change. One way that consumers might adapt to climate change is by replacing their air conditioners more frequently. This replacement behavior could impact the energy efficiency of the stock of air conditioners (ACs), moving it closer to the frontier energy efficiency. I combine panel data from the American Housing Survey with weather data from the Global Historical Climatology Network-Daily (GHCN-D) to examine consumers;; AC replacement decision using a hazard model. I do not find evidence that consumers;; replacement choices respond to hot weather.Chapter 3 is joint work with Michael Moore and Robyn Meeks. We examine the effect on property prices of the Areas of Concern (AOC) Program in the Great Lakes. AOCs are places along rivers and lakes where water quality was deemed to be hazardous. AOCs then received grants for remediation. Several AOCs have since been delisted, or certified to have been remediated. We find robust evidence that the listing of the Areas of Concern negatively impacted housing prices in the areas closest to the AOCs, but we do not find a symmetric effect for the delistings.