The Demand for Energy-Using Assets among the World's Rising Middle Classes
研究了收入增长如何影响家庭购买耗能资产，利用墨西哥有条件现金转移项目的数据发现，资产获取呈非线性，且取决于收入增长速度，对受益者影响显著。
We study household decisions to acquire energy-using assets in the presence of rising incomes. We develop a theoretical framework to characterize the effect of income growth on asset purchases when consumers face credit constraints. We use large and plausibly exogenous shocks to household income generated by the conditional-cash-transfer program in Mexico, Oportunidades, to show that asset acquisition is nonlinear, depends, as predicted in the presence of credit constraints, on the pace of income growth, and both effects are economically large among beneficiaries. Our results may help explain important worldwide trends in the relationship between energy use and income growth.