Do Consumers Respond to Marginal or Average Price? Evidence from Nonlinear Electricity Pricing
利用电力服务区空间断点处的价格差异和家庭面板数据，发现消费者主要对平均价格而非边际价格做出反应，导致非线性定价未能实现节能政策目标。
Nonlinear pricing and taxation complicate economic decisions by creating multiple marginal prices for the same good. This paper provides a framework to uncover consumers’ perceived price of nonlinear price schedules. I exploit price variation at spatial discontinuities in electricity service areas, where households in the same city experience substantially different nonlinear pricing. Using household-level panel data from administrative records, I find strong evidence that consumers respond to average price rather than marginal or expected marginal price. This suboptimizing behavior makes nonlinear pricing unsuccessful in achieving its policy goal of energy conservation and critically changes the welfare implications of nonlinear pricing.