Calendrier du 01 mars 2017
Development Economics Seminar
Du 01/03/2017 de 17:00 à 18:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 10
JAYACHANDRAN Seema ()
Environmental externalities and intrahousehold inefficiencies
When consumption generates negative externalities, raising the price to reflect the social cost of consumption is the preferred policy solution. In some cases – for example, household water and electricity use – consumption is susceptible to a second externality problem: each individual enjoys the private benefits of consumption but shares the costs with other household members, leading to overconsumption even from the household's viewpoint. We test the prediction that intrahousehold inefficiency dampens price sensitivity in the context of piped water use in urban Zambia, combining billing records, randomized price variation, and lab-experimental measures of intrahousehold efficiency. We find that households with above-median efficiency have a short-run price elasticity that is three times higher than that of households with below-median efficiency. These results suggest that when individual-level consumption is difficult to observe and usage is billed at the household level, the required Pigouvian price will need to be set to correct both the environmental and the intrahousehold externalities. Alternative policies such as price incentives targeted toward the primary water-using household members or access to real-time data on household water consumption (which would improve the enforceability of intrahousehold agreements) could also be useful.
Du 01/03/2017 de 12:30 à 14:00
Economic History Seminar
Du 01/03/2017 de 12:30 à 14:00
COGNEAU Denis (PSE)
Public Finance in the French Colonial Empire 1870-1970
écrit avec Yannick DUPRAZ and Sandrine MESPLE-SOMP - (Atelier Histoire Economique)