The Redistributional Impact of Nonlinear Electricity Pricing

被引:97
作者
Borenstein, Severin [1 ]
机构
[1] Univ Calif Berkeley, Haas Sch Business, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA
关键词
DEMAND; TAXES; RATES;
D O I
10.1257/pol.4.3.56
中图分类号
F [经济];
学科分类号
02 ;
摘要
Electricity regulators often mandate increasing-block pricing (IBP)-i.e., marginal price increases with the customer's average daily usage-to protect low-income households from rising costs. IBP has no cost basis, raising a classic conflict between efficiency and distributional goals. Combining household-level utility billing data with census data on income, I find that IBP in California results in modest wealth redistribution, but creates substantial deadweight loss relative to the transfers. I also show that a common approach to studying income distribution effects by using median household income within census block groups may be misleading. (JEL D31, L11, L51, L94, L98, Q41, Q48)
引用
收藏
页码:56 / 90
页数:35
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