Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/238120 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
Center for Mathematical Economics Working Papers No. 642
Publisher: 
Bielefeld University, Center for Mathematical Economics (IMW), Bielefeld
Abstract: 
In this paper we propose and solve a real options model for the optimal adoption of an electric vehicle. A policymaker promotes the abeyance of fossil-fueled vehicles through an incentive, and the representative fossil-fueled vehicle's owner decides the time at which buying an electric vehicle, while minimizing a certain expected cost. This involves a combination of various types of costs: the stochastic opportunity cost of driving one unit distance with a traditional fossil-fueled vehicle instead of an electric one, the cost associated to traffic bans, and the net purchase cost. After determining the optimal switching time and the minimal cost function for a general diffusive opportunity cost, we specialize to the case of a mean-reverting process. In such a setting, we provide a model calibration on real data from Italy, and we study the dependency of the optimal switching time with respect to the model's parameters. Moreover, we study the effect of traffic bans and incentive on the expected optimal switching time. We observe that incentive and traffic bans on fossil-fueled transport can be used as effective tools in the hand of the policymaker to encourage the adoption of electric vehicles, and hence to reduce air pollution.
Subjects: 
electric vehicle adoption
real options
stochastic opportunity cost
pollution
incentives
optimal stopping
JEL: 
C61
Q51
Q52
Q58
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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