[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0185538.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Something from nothing: Estimating consumption rates using propensity scores, with application to emissions reduction policies

Author

Listed:
  • Nicholas Bardsley
  • Milena Büchs
  • Sylke V Schnepf
Abstract
Consumption surveys often record zero purchases of a good because of a short observation window. Measures of distribution are then precluded and only mean consumption rates can be inferred. We show that Propensity Score Matching can be applied to recover the distribution of consumption rates. We demonstrate the method using the UK National Travel Survey, in which c.40% of motorist households purchase no fuel. Estimated consumption rates are plausible judging by households’ annual mileages, and highly skewed. We apply the same approach to estimate CO2 emissions and outcomes of a carbon cap or tax. Reliance on means apparently distorts analysis of such policies because of skewness of the underlying distributions. The regressiveness of a simple tax or cap is overstated, and redistributive features of a revenue-neutral policy are understated.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicholas Bardsley & Milena Büchs & Sylke V Schnepf, 2017. "Something from nothing: Estimating consumption rates using propensity scores, with application to emissions reduction policies," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(10), pages 1-23, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0185538
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0185538
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185538
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185538&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0185538?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brand, Christian & Boardman, Brenda, 2008. "Taming of the few--The unequal distribution of greenhouse gas emissions from personal travel in the UK," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 224-238, January.
    2. Hikaru Hasegawa & Kazuhiro Ueda & Kunie Mori, 2008. "Estimation of Engel Curves from Survey Data with Zero Expenditures," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 70(4), pages 535-558, August.
    3. Simon Dresner and Paul Ekins, 2004. "The Distributional Impacts of Economic Instruments to Limit Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Transport," PSI Research Discussion Series 19, Policy Studies Institute, UK.
    4. Gough, Ian & Abdallah, Saamah & Johnson, Viki & Ryan-Collins, Josh & Smith, Cindy, 2011. "The distribution of total embodied greenhouse gas emissions by households in the UK, and some implications for social policy," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 36562, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Tullio Jappelli & Luigi Pistaferri, 2014. "Fiscal Policy and MPC Heterogeneity," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(4), pages 107-136, October.
    6. Jose Labeaga & Angel Lopez, 1997. "A study of petrol consumption using Spanish panel data," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(6), pages 795-802.
    7. Blundell, Richard & Meghir, Costas, 1987. "Bivariate alternatives to the Tobit model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1-2), pages 179-200.
    8. Alberto Abadie & Guido W. Imbens, 2008. "On the Failure of the Bootstrap for Matching Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 76(6), pages 1537-1557, November.
    9. Keen, Michael, 1986. "Zero Expenditures and the Estimation of Engel Curves," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 1(3), pages 277-286, July.
    10. Deaton, Angus & Irish, Margaret, 1984. "Statistical models for zero expenditures in household budgets," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(1-2), pages 59-80.
    11. Büchs, Milena & Schnepf, Sylke V., 2013. "Who emits most? Associations between socio-economic factors and UK households' home energy, transport, indirect and total CO2 emissions," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 114-123.
    12. Blaylock, James R. & Blisard, William N., 1991. "Consumer demand analysis when zero consumption occurs: the case of cigarettes," Technical Bulletins 312324, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    13. John Gibson & Bonggeun Kim, 2012. "Testing the Infrequent Purchases Model Using Direct Measurement of Hidden Consumption from Food Stocks," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 94(1), pages 257-270.
    14. repec:cep:sticas:/152 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Steve Sorrell, 2010. "An upstream alternative to personal carbon trading," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(4), pages 481-486, July.
    16. Saamah Abdallah & Ian Gough & Victoria Johnson & Josh Ryan-Collins & Cindy Smith, 2011. "The distribution of total greenhouse gas emissions by households in the UK, and some implications for social policy," CASE Papers case152, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Milena Büchs & Noel Cass & Caroline Mullen & Karen Lucas & Diana Ivanova, 2023. "Emissions savings from equitable energy demand reduction," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 8(7), pages 758-769, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Buechs, Milena & Schnepf, Sylke V., 2013. "UK Households' Carbon Footprint: A Comparison of the Association between Household Characteristics and Emissions from Home Energy, Transport and Other Goods and Services," IZA Discussion Papers 7204, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Lévay, Petra Zsuzsa & Vanhille, Josefine & Goedemé, Tim & Verbist, Gerlinde, 2021. "The association between the carbon footprint and the socio-economic characteristics of Belgian households," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    3. Büchs, Milena & Schnepf, Sylke V., 2013. "Who emits most? Associations between socio-economic factors and UK households' home energy, transport, indirect and total CO2 emissions," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 114-123.
    4. Boonsaeng, Tullaya & Carpio, Carlos E., 2015. "Data Collection Period and Food Demand System Estimation using Cross Sectional Data," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 205576, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    5. Richard J. Vyn & Getu Hailu, 2015. "Discount Usage and Price Discrimination for Pork Products in Canada," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 63(4), pages 449-474, December.
    6. Perali, Carlo Federico & Cox, Thomas L., 1995. "Issues In Data Management Of Expenditure Surveys: An Example From The Colombian 1984-85 Urban Survey," Staff Papers 12683, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    7. Chatterton, T. & Anable, J. & Cairns, S. & Wilson, R.E., 2018. "Financial Implications of Car Ownership and Use: a distributional analysis based on observed spatial variance considering income and domestic energy costs," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 30-39.
    8. C. Federico PERALI & Thomas L. COX, 1995. "Abstract Of Issues In Data Management Of Expenditure Surveys: An Example From The Colombian 1984-85 Urban Survey," Staff Papers 389, University of Wisconsin Madison, AAE.
    9. Ruben Van Loon & Jan Rouwendal & Piet Rietveld, 2011. "Vacation Behaviour: Frequency, Destination Choice and Expenditure Level," ERSA conference papers ersa10p921, European Regional Science Association.
    10. Burgess, Martin, 2016. "Personal carbon allowances: A revised model to alleviate distributional issues," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 316-327.
    11. Stewart, Hayden & Dong, Diansheng, 2018. "The Relationship Between Patronizing Direct-to-Consumer Outlets and a Household’s Demand for Fruits and Vegetables," Economic Research Report 276254, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    12. Druckman, Angela & Buck, Ian & Hayward, Bronwyn & Jackson, Tim, 2012. "Time, gender and carbon: A study of the carbon implications of British adults' use of time," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 153-163.
    13. Bardsley, Nicholas & Buechs, Milena, 2013. "Exploiting Zero-Inflated Consumption Data using Propensity Score Matching and the Infrequency of Purchase Model, with Application to Climate Change Policy," MPRA Paper 48727, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Heidi Bruderer Enzler & Andreas Diekmann, 2015. "Environmental Impact and Pro-Environmental Behavior: Correlations to Income and Environmental Concern," ETH Zurich Sociology Working Papers 9, ETH Zurich, Chair of Sociology.
    15. Franziska Klein & Jeroen van den Bergh, 2021. "The employment double dividend of environmental tax reforms: exploring the role of agent behaviour and social interaction," Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(2), pages 189-213, April.
    16. Rinaldo Brau & M. Lippi Bruni & Am Pinna, 2004. "Public vs private demand for covering long term care expenditures," Working Paper CRENoS 200408, Centre for North South Economic Research, University of Cagliari and Sassari, Sardinia.
    17. Schuster, Antonia & Lindner, Michael & Otto, Ilona M., 2023. "Whose house is on fire? Identifying socio-demographic and housing characteristics driving differences in the UK household CO2 emissions," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 207(C).
    18. Hikaru Hasegawa & Kazuhiro Ueda & Kunie Mori, 2008. "Estimation of Engel Curves from Survey Data with Zero Expenditures," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 70(4), pages 535-558, August.
    19. Yen, Steven T. & Chern, Wen S. & Lee, Hwang-Jaw, 1991. "Effects Of Income Sources On Household Food Expenditures," 1991 Annual Meeting, August 4-7, Manhattan, Kansas 271167, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    20. Helen Jensen & Justo Manrique, 1998. "Demand for food commodities by income groups in Indonesia," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(4), pages 491-501.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C13 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Estimation: General
    • D04 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Policy: Formulation; Implementation; Evaluation
    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0185538. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.