IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/enejou/v37y2016i2p257-288.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Rebound Effect for Passenger Vehicles

Author

Listed:
  • Joshua Linn

Abstract

The United States and many other countries are dramatically tightening fuel economy standards for passenger vehicles. Higher fuel economy reduces per-mile driving costs and may increase miles traveled, known as the rebound effect. The magnitude of the elasticity of miles traveled to fuel economy is an important parameter in welfare analysis of fuel economy standards, but all previous estimates from micro data impose at least one of three behavioral assumptions: (a) fuel economy is uncorrelated with vehicle and household attributes; (b) for multivehicle households, each vehicle can be treated as an independent observation in statistical analysis; and (c) the effect of gasoline prices on vehicle miles traveled is inversely proportional to the effect of fuel economy. Two approaches to relaxing these assumptions yield a large estimate of the rebound effect; a one percent fuel economy increase raises driving 0.2 or 0.4 percent, depending on the approach, but the estimates are not statistically significantly different from one another.

Suggested Citation

  • Joshua Linn, 2016. "The Rebound Effect for Passenger Vehicles," The Energy Journal, , vol. 37(2), pages 257-288, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:enejou:v:37:y:2016:i:2:p:257-288
    DOI: 10.5547/01956574.37.2.jlin
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.5547/01956574.37.2.jlin
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.5547/01956574.37.2.jlin?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas Klier & Joshua Linn, 2012. "New‐vehicle characteristics and the cost of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 43(1), pages 186-213, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Rik L. Rozendaal & Herman R. J. Vollebergh, 2021. "Policy-Induced Innovation in Clean Technologies: Evidence from the Car Market," CESifo Working Paper Series 9422, CESifo.
    2. Konishi, Yoshifumi & Kuroda, Sho, 2023. "Why is Japan’s carbon emissions from road transportation declining?," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    3. Takahiko Kiso, 2019. "Evaluating New Policy Instruments of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards: Footprint, Credit Transferring, and Credit Trading," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 72(2), pages 445-476, February.
    4. Mathias Reynaert, 2021. "Abatement Strategies and the Cost of Environmental Regulation: Emission Standards on the European Car Market," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(1), pages 454-488.
    5. Sallee, James M. & Slemrod, Joel, 2012. "Car notches: Strategic automaker responses to fuel economy policy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(11), pages 981-999.
    6. Soren T. Anderson & Ian W. H. Parry & James M. Sallee & Carolyn Fischer, 2011. "Automobile Fuel Economy Standards: Impacts, Efficiency, and Alternatives," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 5(1), pages 89-108, Winter.
    7. Greene, David L. & Greenwald, Judith M. & Ciez, Rebecca E., 2020. "U.S. fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards: What have they achieved and what have we learned?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    8. Moshiri, Saeed & Aliyev, Kamil, 2017. "Rebound effect of efficiency improvement in passenger cars on gasoline consumption in Canada," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 330-341.
    9. D’Haultfœuille, Xavier & Durrmeyer, Isis & Février, Philippe, 2016. "Disentangling sources of vehicle emissions reduction in France: 2003–2008," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 186-229.
    10. Ahmed, Rasha & Stater, Mark, 2017. "Is energy efficiency underprovided? An analysis of the provision of energy efficiency in multi-attribute products," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 132-149.
    11. Chugh, Randy & Cropper, Maureen & Narain, Urvashi, 2011. "The cost of fuel economy in the Indian passenger vehicle market," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(11), pages 7174-7183.
    12. Sun, Qi & Xu, Lin & Yin, Hua, 2016. "Energy pricing reform and energy efficiency in China: Evidence from the automobile market," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 39-51.
    13. Joshua Linn, 2016. "The Rebound Effect for Passenger Vehicles," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2).
    14. Noton, Carlos, 2016. "Structural estimation of price adjustment costs in the European car market," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 105-147.
    15. Anderson, Soren T. & Kellogg, Ryan & Sallee, James M., 2013. "What do consumers believe about future gasoline prices?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 66(3), pages 383-403.
    16. Thomas Klier & Joshua Linn, 2011. "Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards and the Market for New Vehicles," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 445-462, October.
    17. Michael L. Anderson & Maximilian Auffhammer, 2014. "Pounds That Kill: The External Costs of Vehicle Weight," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 81(2), pages 535-571.
    18. Harju, Jarkko & Kosonen, Tuomas & Slemrod, Joel, 2020. "Missing miles: Evasion responses to car taxes," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).
    19. Thomas Klier & Joshua Linn & Yichen C. Zhou, 2020. "The effects of fuel prices and vehicle sales on fuel‐saving technology adoption in passenger vehicles," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 543-578, July.
    20. Liu, Yizao, 2017. "Safer or cheaper? Traffic safety, vehicle choices and the effect of new corporate average fuel economy standards," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 99-112.

    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:sae:enejou:v:37:y:2016:i:2:p:257-288. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.