 The effect of vehicle fuel economy standards on technology adoptionJournal of Public Economics, 2016, vol. 133, issue C, 41-63 Abstract: Many countries are tightening passenger vehicle fuel economy standards. This paper provides the first empirical evidence on the effects of fuel economy standards on technology adoption. We investigate changes in the rate and direction of technology adoption, that is, the extent to which technology is used to increase fuel economy at the expense of other vehicle attributes. We find that recent changes in U.S. and European standards have both increased the rate of technology adoption and affected the direction of technology adoption. Producers reduced horsepower and torque compared to a counterfactual in which fuel economy standards remained unchanged. We estimate opportunity costs from reduced horsepower and torque to be economically significant relative to the gains from fuel savings. Keywords: Passenger vehicles; U.S. greenhouse gas emissions rate standards; European carbon dioxide emissions rate standards; Technology adoption (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:133:y:2016:i:c:p:41-63 DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2015.11.002 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier |
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