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Evaluating Behaviorally Motivated Policy: Experimental Evidence from the Lightbulb Market

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Title Evaluating Behaviorally Motivated Policy: Experimental Evidence from the Lightbulb Market
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/TMN4KD
 
Creator Allcott, Hunt
Taubinsky, Dmitry
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description Imperfect information and inattention to energy costs are important potential motivations for energy efficiency standards and subsidies. We evaluate these motivations in the lightbulb market using a theoretical model and two-randomized experiments. We derive welfare effects as functions of reduced-form sufficient statistics capturing economic and psychological parameters, which we estimate using a novel within-subject information disclosure experiment. The main results suggest that moderate subsidies for energy-efficient lightbulbs may increase welfare, but informational and attentional biases alone do not justify a ban on incandescent lightbulbs. Our results and techniques generate broader methodological insights into welfare analysis with misoptimizing consumers.
 
Subject Social Sciences
 
Contributor Rubio, Karl