Moral Hazard and the Energy Efficiency Gap: Theory and Evidence
研究道德风险如何导致能效投资不足，通过佛罗里达州家庭节能改造数据发现，周五安装的节能措施因工人生产力下降而节能效果更差，并比较了节能保险与最低质量标准两种政策的效果。
We investigate how moral hazard problems can cause suboptimal investment in energy efficiency, a phenomenon known as the energy efficiency gap. We focus on contexts where the quality offered by the energy efficiency provider is imperfectly observable. We formalize underprovision of quality and compare two policy solutions: energy-savings insurance and minimum quality standards. We then provide empirical evidence of moral hazard in home energy retrofits in Florida. We find that for those measures, the quality of which is deemed hard to observe, realized energy savings are subject to day-of-the-week effects. Specifically, energy savings are significantly lower when those measures were installed on a Friday—a day particularly prone to negative shocks on workers’ productivity—than on any other weekday. We finally specify a model to simulate the Floridian market and find that the deadweight loss from moral hazard is about twice as large as that due to associated carbon dioxide externalities.