Conference Agenda

In recent decades, there has been a growing trend among developing countries towards prepayment systems for utilities, such as electricity. These systems can enhance the revenue recovery of utility providers, but their welfare effects on consumers are unclear. Previous research has suggested that paying in advance reduces consumption, but the mechanisms behind this effect are not well explained. To shed light on this issue, we empirically investigate how prepayment influences consumption through price salience, both in the short and long run. Using quasi-experimental variation in the tariff changes, we find compelling evidence that prepaid users are up to four times more elastic than postpaid users. The estimated price elasticity declines smoothly for prepaid users, from -0.15 after one year to -0.46 after six years, whereas postpaid users display an elasticity of -0.04 to -0.08. Our willingness-to-pay survey suggests positive consumer welfare and our applied welfare analysis highlights the gains from the prepayment system. Understanding the interaction between pricing policies and technology adoption will enhance efforts in promoting energy conservation in many developing countries.

Due to the abrupt shortage of gas imports from Russia during the energy crisis in the winter of 2022/2023, European countries had to quickly substitute Russian gas with other energy

sources and had to drastically reduce their gas consumption levels in very short time. Consequently, governments and energy providers launched a series of gas saving programs offering economic incentives to stimulate savings by residential customers. This paper reports empirical evidence from a gas saving program of one of the largest energy providers in Germany. We combine survey data and a natural field experiment to investigate the effectiveness of the program with a particular focus on heterogeneities in program adoption and behaviorally-oriented program design. We find evidence for potential windfall gains as the GBP attracts primarily higher-income, pro-socially motivated participants, leading to significant gas savings, often exceeding the incentivized amounts. With respect to increasing the program efficiency through an empirically guided program design, we report a weak effect of a reminder on pre-set saving goals on saving rates. These observations underline the complexity of designing efficient-saving programs striving to balance program effectiveness and distributional concerns.

This paper estimates the extent of the capitalization of energy efficiency labels into housing prices in Italy. We find that the best energy-performing houses sell at a 25% premium compared to the worst-performing houses. However, the extent of capitalization is highly heterogeneous across regions, and differences in climate conditions only partially explain this variation. Understanding the factors underlying energy efficiency capitalization is key to designing the most appropriate policy mix for supporting investments in energy efficiency, particularly in light of the considerable effort required to comply with the recent EPBD Recast EU directive. We show that the capitalization is higher where population concerns about climate change are greater, and it is positively correlated with local energy price trends. Moreover, we find a negative relationship between the capitalization rate and land value.

Information on operating costs can enable potential buyers to purchase more fuel-

efficient vehicles. We test this hypothesis in a developing country setting using per-

sonalised information provision in a randomised controlled trial: we recruit respondents looking to purchase a motorcycle in Kathmandu, Nepal, and provide them information on annual operating cost-savings or five-year operating cost-savings of different models using energy labels on a web-based platform. We find that both information treatments were effective in improving the fuel economy of the motorcycles actually purchased by

respondents, and the motorcycle that they stated they would like to purchase, with a

stronger effect for the five-year operating cost savings. Furthermore, the treatments were particularly effective with respondents of an impatient or impulsive nature. Our study provides novel evidence on the effectiveness of information provision in low-education settings, where the opportunity cost of collecting information may be high.