Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/26822 
Year of Publication: 
2008
Series/Report no.: 
Ruhr Economic Papers No. 58
Publisher: 
Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (RWI), Essen
Abstract: 
Understanding the determinants of home-efficiency improvements is significant to a range of energy policy issues, including the reduction of fossil fuel use and environmental protection. This paper analyzes retrofit choices by assembling a unique data set merging a nationwide household survey from Germany with regional data on wages and construction costs. To explore the influence of both heterogeneous preferences and correlation among the utility of alternatives, conditional-, random parameters-, and error components logit models are estimated that parameterize the influence of costs, energy savings, and household-level socioeconomic attributes on the likelihood of undertaking one of 16 renovation options. We use the model coefficients to derive household-specific marginal willingness-to-pay estimates, and with these assess the extent to which free-ridership may undermine the effectiveness of recently implemented programs that subsidize the costs of retrofits.
Subjects: 
Heterogenous preferences
residential sector
revealed-preference data
JEL: 
C25
D12
Q4
ISBN: 
978-3-86788-061-9
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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