We study the impact of fuel taxes and kilometer taxes on households' choices of vehicle quality, on their demand for kilometers driven, and on fuel consumption. Moreover, embedding this information in a model of the car market, we analyze the implications of these taxes for the opportunity costs...

Can directed technical change be used to combat climate change? We construct new firm-level panel data on auto industry innovation distinguishing between dirty (internal combustion engine) and clean (e.g. electric and hybrid) patents across 80 countries over several decades. We show that firms...

Focusing on travel survey data from Germany, this paper investigates the determinants of automobile travel, with the specific aim of quantifying the effects of fuel prices and fuel economy. The analysis is predicated on the notion that car mileage is a two-stage decision process, comprising the...

Die Europäische Union hat sich verpflichtet, ihre CO2-Emissionen bis 2020 um 20% zu reduzieren. Für dieses Ziel ist die EU-Verordnung zu den Emissionsnormen für neue Personenkraftwagen von besonderer Bedeutung. Sie hat dazu beigetragen, dass die CO2-Emissionen pro Neuwagen in der EU bereits...

Research on 'happiness' suggests that once an average per capitaincome of around US$10,000 is achieved in acountry, further increases in income will not lead to a significantincrease in happiness. Additional income willprobably often be spent on the satisfaction of mainly 'relative'needs, of...

This paper examines the rationale for the different tax treatment of gasoline and diesel cars currently observed in Europe. First, we analyse possible justifications for a different tax treatment: pure tax revenue considerations, externality cons0iderations and constraints on the tax instruments...

Many countries have adopted policies designed to reduce CO2 emissions from road vehicles. Taxes linked to the CO2 emissions rate or the fuel economy of a vehicle (which is inversely related to its CO2 emissions rate) are examples of such policies. These taxes are usually imposed on new vehicles,...

The growth rate of total factor productivity seems to have increased recently, at least in the United States. Higher US productivity growth may justify higher stock market valuations than in the past and thus herald an emerging New Economy. However, the size of the estimated growth rate of total...

This volume was prepared by Julian Dieler while he was working with the Center for Energy, Climate and exhaustible Resources at the Ifo Institute for Economic Research. At the latest since the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 climate policies are permanently on the international policy...

This paper presents empirical evidence against the popular perception that macro volatility is exogenous. We obtain tax effects on macro aggregates in the stochastic neoclassical model. Taxes are shown to affect the second moment of output growth rates without affecting the first moment....