Welcome

I am a postdoctoral research fellow at the Toulouse School of Economics.
My main research interests are environmental economics, applied microeconomics, innovation economics and transportation.

CV

Working Papers

Environmental Regulation in the Car Industry and Technological Change Among Suppliers

Abstract

Suppliers of intermediate inputs can be important drivers of technological change. Nevertheless, regulation aiming to induce technological transformations, e.g. in the context of climate change mitigation, is often imposed only on final products. In this paper, I study the effect of a performance standard for a final product on the innovation outcomes of intermediate input suppliers. I construct a novel data set, linking patent applications by automotive suppliers to administrative data on their client’s compliance with the European CO2 emission standard for passenger cars. To identify the causal effect of changes in the stringency of the downstream emission standard, I leverage the heterogeneous exposure of suppliers, measured using proprietary data on supply chains in the car industry, to changes in the composition of the European car market. I find that being exposed to more stringent downstream environmental regulation increases innovation for zero- or low-emission vehicle technologies among existing suppliers. Moreover, when car manufacturers face more stringent regulation, they are more likely to source from additional suppliers with expertise in emission-reducing technologies. These results suggest that environmental regulation induces technology spillovers from suppliers to the regulated downstream firms.

No Place Like Home: Charging Infrastructure and the Environmental Advantage of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles
(joint with Wolfgang Habla, Benjamin Rübenacker and Ulrich Wagner)
Resubmitted to the Journal of the European Economic Association. Media coverage: VoxEU

Abstract

Many European companies face the challenge of lowering CO2 emissions from their company car fleets. A promising lever is to increase the notoriously low electric usage of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs). This paper examines whether home charging infrastructure can help achieve these goals. We leverage quasi-experimental variation in the delivery and installation of home chargers to quantify the impact of this technology on energy use and CO2 emissions of PHEV company cars held by 856 employees of a large German company. Since fuel and electricity expenditures for these cars are covered by the employer, home charging mainly changes the nonmonetary costs to an employee. We find that access to home charging increases electricity consumption by 317.9 (±23.3) kWh per quarter and decreases fuel consumption by 97.97 (±36.5) liters, reducing CO2 emissions by 38%. Moreover, access to home charging increases the employee's propensity to choose a Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) upon renewal of the lease by 28.4 (±25.6) percentage points. We use these estimates to compute the private levelized abatement costs of home chargers for a range of scenarios characterizing the diffusion of BEVs and the effect of the program on vehicle choice. With current tax-inclusive energy prices, home chargers break even for the company within eight to 16 years.

The Alignment Effect of Auditing
(joint with Andreas Gerster and Michael Kramm)
R&R at the Journal of Public Economics.

Abstract

There is growing evidence that households often forgo profitable energy efficiency retrofits, partly due to inattention and imperfect information about their economic benefits. We conduct an incentivized survey experiment to evaluate both the effectiveness and the welfare implications of a widely used policy tool aimed at addressing this issue: providing information from an energy efficiency audit. In our incentivized experiment, participants in the treatment group receive personalized information about the potential cost savings from retrofitting their heating systems, while those in the control group do not receive such information. Our results show that providing this information does not increase the average willingness to pay for a retrofit. However, it enhances welfare– by approximately 43 Euro per household– by better aligning households’ decisions to retrofit with their actual cost savings.

Publications

Targeted policies to break the deadlock on heating bans
Nature Climate Change (Comment)
(joint with Ottmar Edenhofer, Andreas Gerster, Erica Myers, Michael Pahle and Karen Palmer)

Abstract

As an important policy instrument for building sector decarbonization, bans on fossil fuel-based heating face fierce opposition with doubts over their economic viability. With a unified perspective that incorporates the views of proponents and opponents, we discuss the importance of targeted policies to break the deadlock.

Can social comparisons and moral appeals encourage low-emission transport use?
Transportation Research Part D: Transport and the Environment
(joint with Wolfgang Habla and Ulrich Wagner)

Abstract

Because company cars add to corporate CO2 footprints, companies are beginning to replace cars with mobility budgets that employees can use for leisure and commuting trips. This study examines whether nudges can encourage sustainable travel in such a subsidized setting. We conduct a field experiment with 341 employees of a large German company. Observing expenditure items charged to the mobility budget, we test if social comparisons and a climate-related moral appeal induce a shift towards low-emissions transport modes. We find that simultaneous application of both nudges causes a reduction in car use, particularly taxi and ride sharing, as well as substitution towards micromobility, but not public transport. The social comparison alone is not effective, and the treatment effects of the combined nudge vanish in the second half of the treatment period. Survey evidence suggests that these results are driven by a minority that complies with the communicated social norm.

Dormant Papers

Are there Rebound Effects from Electric Vehicle Adoption? Evidence from German Household Data
(joint with Vera Huwe, ZEW Discussion Paper No. 20-048, this version October 2020)

Abstract

We analyze rebound effects of electric vehicle adoption on both the extensive (vehicle ownership) and the intensive (vehicle mileage) margin using cross-sectional household level data on vehilce ownership and use from Germany. For the identification of changes in the number of cars owned after electric vehicle adoption, we predict counterfactual car ownership using a supervised learning approach. We then investigate the effect of electric vehicle adoption on household mileage based on a matching of households owning electric vehicles to similar owners of conventional cars. We cannot verify a significant increase in the number of cars owned for households with one electric and one conventional vehicle. However, electric vehicle ownership is associated with a significant reduction in annual mileage of -23 % of the sample mean. For the selection of covariates for matching, we contrast an ad hoc variable selection with a data-driven variable selection method (double LASSO). Here, we find that the data-driven variable selection changes the magnitude of the estimation results substantially.