IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bdi/opques/qef_800_23.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

To eat or to heat: are energy bills squeezing people's spending?

Author

Listed:
  • Andrea Colabella

    (Bank of Italy)

  • Luciano Lavecchia

    (Bank of Italy)

  • Valentina Michelangeli

    (Bank of Italy)

  • Raffaella Pico

    (Bank of Italy)

Abstract

This paper presents an assessment of the energy price shocks that hit Italian households starting in mid-2021 and their impact on households' financial vulnerability. First, we estimate the price elasticity of electricity and heating demand and compute the variation between 2020 and 2022 within the framework presented in Faiella and Lavecchia (2021b). Second, we study how those variations affected households' financial vulnerability, based on an extension of the modelling strategy proposed by Faiella et al. (2022). Our results indicate that, if energy price elasticity is not duly accounted for, financial vulnerability rises excessively on the heels of an energy price upsurge. In contrast, when consumption rebalancing within a dynamic microsimulation model is taken into account, financial vulnerability remains rather low and in line with supervisory data. While the risks for financial stability associated with energy shocks are therefore limited, this occurs at the of expense of household consumption and welfare.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrea Colabella & Luciano Lavecchia & Valentina Michelangeli & Raffaella Pico, 2023. "To eat or to heat: are energy bills squeezing people's spending?," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 800, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    • Handle: RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_800_23
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/qef/2023-0800/QEF_800_23.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Labandeira, Xavier & Labeaga, José M. & López-Otero, Xiral, 2017. "A meta-analysis on the price elasticity of energy demand," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 549-568.
    2. Faiella, Ivan & Lavecchia, Luciano & Michelangeli, Valentina & Mistretta, Alessandro, 2022. "A climate stress test on the financial vulnerability of Italian households and firms," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 396-417.
    3. Peersman, Gert & Wauters, Joris, 2024. "Heterogeneous household responses to energy price shocks," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    4. Espey, James A. & Espey, Molly, 2004. "Turning on the Lights: A Meta-Analysis of Residential Electricity Demand Elasticities," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Southern Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 36(1), pages 1-17, April.
    5. Orsetta Causa & Emilia Soldani & Nhung Luu, 2023. "A cost-of-living squeeze? Distributional implications of rising inflation," Public Sector Economics, Institute of Public Finance, vol. 47(4), pages 431-460.
    6. Carmela Aurora Attinà & Francesco Franceschi & Valentina Michelangeli, 2020. "Modelling households’ financial vulnerability with consumer credit and mortgage renegotiations," International Journal of Microsimulation, International Microsimulation Association, vol. 13(1), pages 67-91.
    7. Yuru Guan & Jin Yan & Yuli Shan & Yannan Zhou & Ye Hang & Ruoqi Li & Yu Liu & Binyuan Liu & Qingyun Nie & Benedikt Bruckner & Kuishuang Feng & Klaus Hubacek, 2023. "Burden of the global energy price crisis on households," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 8(3), pages 304-316, March.
    8. Deaton, Angus, 1985. "Panel data from time series of cross-sections," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1-2), pages 109-126.
    9. Valentina Michelangeli & Mario Pietrunti, 2014. "A Microsimulation Model to evaluate Italian Households Financial Vulnerability," International Journal of Microsimulation, International Microsimulation Association, vol. 7(3), pages 53-79.
    10. Simona Bigerna, 2012. "Electricity Demand Elasticity in Italy," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 40(4), pages 439-440, December.
    11. Favero, Filippo & Grossi, Luigi, 2023. "Analysis of individual natural gas consumption and price elasticity: Evidence from billing data in Italy," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    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. Bardazzi, Rossella & Gastaldi, Francesca & Iafrate, Francesca & Pansini, Rosaria Vega & Pazienza, Maria Grazia & Pollastri, Corrado, 2024. "Inflation and distributional impacts: Have mitigation policies been successful for vulnerable and energy poor households?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).

    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. Ivan Faiella & Luciano Lavecchia, 2021. "Households' energy demand and the effects of carbon pricing in Italy," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 614, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    2. Bardazzi, Rossella & Gastaldi, Francesca & Iafrate, Francesca & Pansini, Rosaria Vega & Pazienza, Maria Grazia & Pollastri, Corrado, 2024. "Inflation and distributional impacts: Have mitigation policies been successful for vulnerable and energy poor households?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    3. Faiella, Ivan & Lavecchia, Luciano & Michelangeli, Valentina & Mistretta, Alessandro, 2022. "A climate stress test on the financial vulnerability of Italian households and firms," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 396-417.
    4. Zabaloy, Maria Florencia & Viego, Valentina, 2022. "Household electricity demand in Latin America and the Caribbean: A meta-analysis of price elasticity," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    5. Farrell, Niall, 2021. "The increasing cost of ignoring Coase: Inefficient electricity tariffs, welfare loss and welfare-reducing technological change," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    6. Javier Bueno & Desiderio Romero-Jordán & Pablo del Río, 2020. "Analysing the Drivers of Electricity Demand in Spain after the Economic Crisis," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-18, October.
    7. Woo, C.K. & Liu, Y. & Zarnikau, J. & Shiu, A. & Luo, X. & Kahrl, F., 2018. "Price elasticities of retail energy demands in the United States: New evidence from a panel of monthly data for 2001–2016," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 222(C), pages 460-474.
    8. Andruszkiewicz, Jerzy & Lorenc, Józef & Weychan, Agnieszka, 2020. "Seasonal variability of price elasticity of demand of households using zonal tariffs and its impact on hourly load of the power system," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    9. Maria Chiara D'errico, 2020. "Demand Elasticity in the Italian Power Market: a Bayesian Experiment under dual pricing scheme," Review of Economics and Institutions, Università di Perugia, vol. 11(1-2).
    10. Niklas Döbbeling-Hildebrandt & Klaas Miersch & Tarun M. Khanna & Marion Bachelet & Stephan B. Bruns & Max Callaghan & Ottmar Edenhofer & Christian Flachsland & Piers M. Forster & Matthias Kalkuhl & Ni, 2024. "Systematic review and meta-analysis of ex-post evaluations on the effectiveness of carbon pricing," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-12, December.
    11. Immervoll, Herwig & Linden, Jules & O'Donoghue, Cathal & Sologon, Denisa Maria, 2023. "Who Pays for Higher Carbon Prices? Illustration for Lithuania and a Research Agenda," IZA Discussion Papers 15868, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Jerzy Andruszkiewicz & Józef Lorenc & Agnieszka Weychan, 2019. "Demand Price Elasticity of Residential Electricity Consumers with Zonal Tariff Settlement Based on Their Load Profiles," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(22), pages 1-22, November.
    13. Aslam, Misbah & Ahmad, Eatzaz, 2023. "Untangling electricity demand elasticities: Insights from heterogeneous household groups in Pakistan," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 282(C).
    14. Farrell, Niall & Meles, Tensay Hadush, 2023. "The equity and efficiency of electricity network tariffs," Papers WP744, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    15. Pellini, Elisabetta, 2021. "Estimating income and price elasticities of residential electricity demand with Autometrics," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    16. Csereklyei, Zsuzsanna, 2020. "Price and income elasticities of residential and industrial electricity demand in the European Union," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    17. Bertolini, Marina & Buso, Marco & Greco, Luciano, 2020. "Competition in smart distribution grids," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    18. Francesco Pietro Colelli & Enrica De Cian & Wilmer Pasut & Lucia Piazza, 2023. "Toward Net Zero in the midst of the energy and climate crises: the response of residential photovoltaic systems," Working Papers 2023:18, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    19. Silva, Susana & Soares, Isabel & Pinho, Carlos, 2017. "Electricity demand response to price changes: The Portuguese case taking into account income differences," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 335-342.
    20. Ivan Ackermann & Doina Radulescu & Doina Maria Radulescu, 2024. "Unveiling the Energy Price Tag – Assessing the Degree of Regressivity of Household Energy Expenditures Among European Countries," CESifo Working Paper Series 11390, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    climate stress test; financial vulnerability; inflation; demand elasticity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C1 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General
    • G5 - Financial Economics - - Household Finance
    • Q41 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Demand and Supply; Prices
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:bdi:opques:qef_800_23. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bdigvit.html .

    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.