Conference Agenda

In societies relying on voluntary public good provision, individuals may experience their responsibility to contribute as a moral burden. Considering a morally motivated population with exogenous income inequality, we explore social processes driven by this moral burden. Ethical views are assumed to be socially learnt, but reluctantly so: one is less prone to adopt views implying higher fair contributions for oneself. Egalitarian peers, demanding high contributions from the rich, are avoided by the rich, but sought by the poor. The resulting long-run equilibrium is extremely segregated and polarized, with minimal voluntary contributions. Public provision, however, limits the polarization.

This paper explores the spatial nature of peer effects in the London property market and how they increase prices and upgrades exclusively in areas with clusters of highly energy efficient properties. By exploiting random variation in the timing of listings to leverage information reported to the market, I find that buyers are attentive to energy efficiency scores at the neighbourhood-level, generating a discontinuity in prices at the border of highly-efficient neighbourhoods. Premiums exist and persist for such neighbourhoods only when clusters are identifiable through listings and

are driven by the upgrades undertaken by households who sort into these neighbourhoods based on preferences for energy efficiency. This induces peer effects for incumbent households who are more likely to make energy efficiency upgrades through exposure to selecting households. The empirical findings are motivated by a theoretical model that predicts sorting based on preferences

for energy efficiency, but also for those on higher incomes. Current literature has focused more on the impact of private investments on prices at the property-level, with little research into how one’s peers influence this dynamic. I fill this gap with both empirical and theoretical evidence, while also reflecting on the growing debate surrounding Net Zero and the role of residential emissions.

This paper shows for the first time the support for progressive carbon taxes and individual caps. It demonstrates how this support is linked with an aversion to intratemporal carbon footprint inequality and is thus likely to increase. To that end, it uses a survey representative of the French population.

A near majority supports progressive carbon taxes with uniform revenue redistribution. This support is much higher than for linear carbon taxes with a progressive revenue redistribution. This is true for all carbon tax bases that could be immediately implementable, -on gas, flights, and fuels. A near majority also favors individual flight caps.

Given sufficient progress in carbon accounting, respondents wish to include emissions associated with wealth, financial, and to a lesser extent, labor income in the definition of an individual carbon tax base. Using this footprint definition, we show that a near majority also supports a progressive carbon tax on top of a more progressive income tax, as well as individual carbon caps.

A tax reform model reveals how support for progressive carbon taxes and individual caps is influenced by ecologearian social welfare preferences. These preferences, --introduced in this paper--, express aversion to intra-temporal footprint inequality. Our survey shows that respondents are ecologearian, not utilitarian. Consistent with ecologearian preferences, information on footprint inequality increases support for progressive carbon taxes. Since this information comes from recently available statistics and media campaigns, this suggests a growing support for progressive carbon taxes in the future.

Behavioral nudges in the form of peer-comparison information have proven effective in promoting pro-social behavior. The most prominent example is the use of home energy reports in electricity markets. While there is strong evidence that peer comparisons can induce reductions in externality-generating consumption, it is not clear through which channels the nudges operate. One possible channel is pecuniary: peer comparisons may make consumption choices more salient and prompt discovery of opportunities for financial savings. The other is non-pecuniary: peer comparisons may trigger moral motives such as guilt, social conformism, or social competitiveness. This study uses a controlled experiment, informed by a theoretical model, to disentangle these potential effects. The model extends that of Allcott and Kessler (2019) to allow for possible interactions between pecuniary and non-pecuniary motives. The experiment uses a market design with negative externalities and fixed (either low or high, depending on the treatment) financial savings from pro-social behavior. The experiment thus removes the pecuniary, "discovery" channel, leaving only the non-pecuniary, "moral" channel. We find that the nudge still enhances pro-social behavior, pointing to the moral channel's importance. Two additional, surprising findings are that the nudge is more effective in the treatment with high financial savings (indicating that nudges and financial incentives can complement each other) and is more effective also for participants with relatively cooperative worldviews. Both findings contradict baseline predictions of our model. The contradiction is resolved, however, if social-comparison utility exhibits a "what the hell" effect, whereby comparing unfavorably to others feels more acceptable, the more unfavorable the comparison becomes.