Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/61689 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
Ruhr Economic Papers No. 280
Publisher: 
Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (RWI), Essen
Abstract: 
The Energy Tax Directive recently proposed by the European Commission envisages to tax fuels based on their energy content. By raising prices for diesel to a level higher than that of petrol, this proposal would eliminate the price advantage currently enjoyed by diesel in most EU Member States. To explore the implications of such a tax regime for automobile travel, the present analysis undertakes a comparative analysis of price elasticities for both fuel types. Drawing on household panel data from Germany, we fail to reject the hypothesis that the fuel price elasticities for petrol and diesel are equal. With our uniform fuel price elasticity estimates being on the order of -0.5 to -0.42, the typical finding from the empirical literature that the elasticities gleaned from household-level data are generally larger than those from aggregate time-series data is reconfirmed.
Subjects: 
Fuel taxation
fuel price elasticities
household data
automobile travel
panel
JEL: 
L98
Y10
ISBN: 
978-3-86788-325-2
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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