Vehicle Choices, Miles Driven, and Pollution Policies / Ye Feng, Don Fullerton, Li Gan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Feng, Ye.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Fullerton, Don.

Gan, Li.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w11553.

NBER working paper series no. w11553

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2005.

Summary:

Mobile sources contribute large percentages of each pollutant, but technology is not yet available to measure and tax emissions from each vehicle. We build a behavioral model of household choices about vehicles and miles traveled. The ideal-but-unavailable emissions tax would encourage drivers to abate emissions through many behaviors, some of which involve market transactions that can be observed for feasible market incentives (such as a gas tax, subsidy to new cars, or tax by vehicle type). Our model can calculate behavioral effects of each such price and thus calculate car choices, miles, and emissions.

A nested logit structure is used to model discrete choices among different vehicle bundles. We also consider continuous choices of miles driven and the age of each vehicle. We propose a consistent estimation method for both discrete and continuous demands in one step, to capture the interactive effects of simultaneous decisions. Results are compared with those of the traditional sequential estimation procedure.

Notes:

Print version record

August 2005.