Are Home Buyers Inattentive? Evidence from Capitalization of Energy Costs
利用马萨诸塞州燃油价格变化带来的能源成本差异，研究发现购房者会充分将能源支出资本化到房价中，这对市场导向的污染政策有效性有重要启示。
This paper explores whether home buyers are attentive to energy costs. The cost-effectiveness of market-based pollution policies crucially depends on whether consumers are attentive to energy costs when purchasing energy-using durables. I exploit energy-cost variation from fuel-price changes in Massachusetts where there is significant overlap in the geographic and age distributions of oil-heated and gas-heated homes. The results strongly reject that home buyers are unresponsive to energy costs under a wide range of consumption and discount-rate assumptions. Furthermore, my preferred specification is consistent with full capitalization of fuel expenditures at discount rates similar to mortgage interest rates.