January 9, 2020

Using Machine Learning to Target Treatment: The Case of Household Energy Use

In this Working Paper, the researchers use causal forests to evaluate the heterogeneous treatment effects (TEs) of repeated behavioral nudges towards household energy conservation and find suggestive evidence of a “boomerang effect”: households with lower consumption than similar neighbors are the ones with positive TE estimates.

SEE FULL ARTICLE
December 18, 2019

Social Comparison and Energy Conservation in a Collective Action Context

In this CEEPR Working Paper, the authors report results from a social comparison feedback experiment incentivizing a reduction of indoor temperatures during the heating season. Despite the fact that most study participants did not face direct financial benefits from lowering heating energy consumption, the results show a statistically significant treatment effect of -0.54°F (-1.2%).

SEE FULL ARTICLE
December 10, 2019

Machine Learning for Solar Accessibility: Implications for Low-Income Solar Expansion and Profitability

The US solar industry typically uses a standard credit score as a factor in approving customers for new installations. The authors of this paper compare machine learning and econometric models to predict the probability of default to credit-score cutoffs.

SEE FULL ARTICLE
December 9, 2019

Getting the carbon out of the electricity sector

CEEPR faculty members Paul Joskow, David Keith, Christopher Knittel and Jessika Trancik participated in a recent MIT symposium titled “Decarbonizing the Electricity Sector.”

SEE FULL ARTICLE
November 14, 2019

Driving Behavior and the Price of Gasoline: Evidence from Fueling-Level Micro Data

In this CEEPR Working Paper, Professor Christopher Knittel and Professor Shinsuke Tanaka use novel microdata on on-road fuel consumption and prices paid for fuel to estimate short-run elasticities of demand for gasoline consumption.

SEE FULL ARTICLE
October 28, 2019

Five reasons climate change is the worst environmental problem the world has ever faced

In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Professor Christopher Knittel lays out five features that combine to make global warming a more vexing environmental crisis than any we have faced before.

SEE FULL ARTICLE
See Archives