We examine an energy conservation program that instills both pecuniary and nonpecuniary incentives using a tournament among peer military households. Under the tournament, households only pay for the electricity that exceeds 110 percent of a peer-group average and receive a rebate for each kilowatt-hour below 90 percent of the peer-group average. Prior to the program, no household paid for electricity. We evaluate the impacts of the program in two ways. First, we use difference-in-differences to estimate how the program affected electricity use for those households who paid/received nothing throughout the program in comparison to those who received payments or rebates. Second, we examine how arguably exogenous changes in the peer-group average, driven by entry and exit of households, affected subsequent electricity use by continuing households. Our main result indicates that the interaction between monetary incentives and behavioral factors makes the peer comparison more powerful and dominates consumer responses.

Following Graff Zivin and Neidell (2014), this paper addresses reallocation of time spent by humans doing activities due to global warming under the Great Recession effects. Time allocated to leisure activities is responsive in the cold weather but not in the warm weather. Time allocated to working is not significantly responsive to temperature changes, neither in cold nor warm weather. In addition, although the unemployment rates increased remarkably during the Great Recession, there is no statistically significant effects of the recession on the relationship between temperature and time allocation.

This technical report summarizes how neighborhood housing price appreciation can impact the quality of life beyond individual-level impacts. Using the ZTRAX database provided by Zillow, Gallup data and American Community Survey data for Hawaii in the period of 2008-2017, we develop plausibly unbiased housing measures, especially price appreciation and sales volume curves, for each area. We then examine whether the variation in those housing measures are independently associated with the well-being net of individual characteristics. Our main findings indicate that areas with high housing prices contain happier people, but only because those people are more wealthy. Besides, people who have just relocated into a neighborhood seem to be happier than those who have been there for some time. We find a negative association between increasing housing prices and well-being although data limitations restrict our ability to assert a null effect.

Interstate natural gas transmission and storage infrastructure is facilitated using regulated, private transactions. Pipeline companies obtain long-term contracts from producers and wholesale purchasers, typically local distribution companies (LDCs). Historically, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) accepted these counterparty contracts as sufficient justification of need. Typically the LDCs are themselves regulated firms, which sometimes possess affiliations with pipeline companies. But with contracted costs largely passed through to retail customers via regulated prices, it is unclear whether contracting parties face sufficient competition or otherwise possess an incentive to find least-cost alternatives. To aid evaluation of past and future investments, we develop a national-level optimization model that can assess the need for new interstate pipeline and storage facilities. The model takes production and demand pathways as fixed and minimizes the infrastructure and operation costs of transport and storage in order to balance supply and demand on each day in each state. Transport of gas can be achieved using pipeline transmission of dry gas, or using truck or ship transport of liquefied natural gas (LNG), and optimal placement of liquefaction and gasification facilities. The model also accounts for international imports and exports of both dry gas and LNG. Three underground dry-gas storage facilities are considered, as well as LNG storage. We compare the model’s optimized plan with observed outcomes as the sector grew rapidly with hydraulic fracturing. We find that the U.S. has built 38 percent more pipeline and 27 percent more underground storage than necessary, amounting to roughly $179 billion in excess investment. It would have been more economic to expand pipeline far less than observed and instead satisfy critical-peak demands for gas using LNG, plus necessary liquefaction and gasification facilities. Differences between optimized and observed investments vary across the interstate network, while flows between states and into and out of storage bear a close resemblance to observed outcomes.

Since the implementation of Vietnam’s economic renovation or ‘Doi Moi’ policy in 1986, Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) urban has grown quickly. However, this also leads to an increase in inequality. Its peri-urban area, which undergoes a higher level of urbanization than an urban area, faces more problems such as land-use change, inadequate development process, unequal allocation of services and investment, and ignorance of environmental protection and cultural preservation. These impacts show inequality in living conditions between residents of the peri-urban area and the urban area. Using the framework of the Peri-Urban Political-Ecology, this paper depicts a general picture of the situation and analyse the causes of social inequalities between these two areas in terms of economy, public services, and the environment through “everyday practices”. Using HCMC’s statistical data in the 2015-2017 period, we find that the main causes in inequalities between these two areas are the inevitability of urban metabolism and the unequal power interaction among the state, society and market.