Welcome

I am a PhD student in Economics at the University of Mannheim.
In my research, I work on questions from Environmental Economics, Transportation Economics and Behavioral Economics.

CV

Working Papers

Can social comparisons and moral suasion increase public transport ridership and decrease car use?
(joint with Wolfgang Habla and Ulrich Wagner, ZEW Discussion Paper No. 23-003, 2023)

Abstract

Under pressure to reduce corporate CO2 emissions, companies are beginning to replace subsidized company car schemes with so-called mobility budgets that employees can spend on leisure and commuting trips, using a broad range of transport modes. Given their novelty, little is known about how mobility budgets should be designed to encourage sustainable choices. Since prices play a limited role in this subsidized setting, our study focuses on behavioral interventions. In a field experiment with 341 employees of a large German company, we test whether social comparisons, either in isolation or in combination with a climate-related moral appeal, can change the use of public and car-related transportation. We find strong evidence for a reduction in car-related mobility in response to the combined treatment, which is driven by taxi and ride-sharing services. This is accompanied by substitution towards micromobility, i.e., transport modes such as shared e-scooters or bikes, but not towards public transport. We do not find any effects of the social comparison alone. Our results demonstrate that small, norm-based nudges can change transportation behavior, albeit for a limited time.

Work in Progress

Regulatory Stringency, Supply Chains and Innovation in the Car Industry

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, 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.