Understanding the determinants of home-efficiency improvements is significant to a range of energy policy issues, including the reduction of fossil fuel use and environmental protection. This paper analyzes retrofit choices by assembling a unique data set merging a nationwide household survey...

Identifying the incidence of free-ridership is significant to a range of issues relevant to program evaluation, including the calculation of net program benefits and more general assessments of political acceptability. Estimates of free-ridership in the area of energy policy frequently rely on...

With its commitment to double the share of renewable fuels in electricity generation to at least 30% by 2020, the German government has embarked on a potentially costly policy course whose public support remains an open empirical question. Building on household survey data, in this paper we...

This paper measures energy efficiency improvements of US single-family homes between 1997 and 2001 using a two-stage procedure. In the first stage, an indicator of energy efficiency is derived by means of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), and the analogy between the DEA estimator and traditional...

This article investigates the behavioral drivers of pasture creation and associated implications for deforestation in a 22,000 km2 agricultural frontier spanning the base of Mexico‘s southern Yucatán. After developing a theoretical model that highlights the role of social networks and...

Focusing on individual motorists in car-owning households in Germany, this analysis econometrically investigates the determinants of automobile travel for non-work service activities against the backdrop of two questions: 1) Does gender play a role in determining the probability of car use and...

Interaction effects capture the impact of one explanatory variable x1 on the marginal effect of another explanatory variable x2. To explore interaction effects, so-called interaction terms x1x2 are typically included in estimation specifications. While in linear models the effect of a marginal...

The EU-wide Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), established in 2005, is a key pillar of Europe's strategy to attain compliance with the Kyoto Protocol. Under this scheme, CO2 allowances have thus far been allocated largely free of charge. This paper demonstrates that such cost-free allocation,...

As part of its efforts to reach the targets of the Kyoto Protocol, the European Commission is currently considering a new directive to reduce the per-kilometer CO2 emissions of newly registered automobiles. This paper critically assesses this proposal with respect to its economic and...

The confluence of factors driving urban growth is highly complex, resulting from a combination of ecological and social determinants that co-evolve over time and space. Identifying these factors and quantifying their impact necessitates models that capture both why urbanization happens as well...