The role of managerial risk preferences on effectiveness of wind subsidies
研究了风电项目管理者风险偏好如何影响产出型与资本型税收抵免对风电投资的有效性，发现产出型补贴因增加现金流不确定性而刺激更多投资。
Do risk preferences from wind project managers differentially determine the effectiveness of output-based and capital-based tax credits to wind investments? I address this question by developing and estimating a rational expectations partial equilibrium framework, disciplined to ERCOT plant-level microdata, that exploits this fundamental design difference between the Production Tax Credit (PTC) and the Investment Tax Credit (ITC). I show that the inherently riskier profile of output-based PTC benefits—tied to the stochastic future performance of wind output—induces project managers to invest more in wind capacity than under an alternative present-value-equivalent capital-based ITC subsidy (certain at the time of investment decisions). This occurs because output-based subsidies introduce greater uncertainty into the stream of investment cash flows—tied to the compensation payments of wind project managers—compared to their capital-based counterparts. As a result, managers over-invest relative to the capital-based subsidy as a form of self-insurance against this increased variance to limit potential compensation shortfalls beyond a certain threshold that emerge from downside risk in realized wind output over the decades-long investment horizons of wind projects. This mechanism renders output-based subsidies more effective at stimulating wind investments than present-value-equivalent capital-based tax credits.