Three Essays On Environmental Economics And Industrial Organization

The second paper investigates the effect of Beijing's vehicle lottery system on fleet composition, fuel consumption, air pollution, and social welfare. We find that the lottery reduced new passenger vehicle sales by 50.15%, fuel consumption by 48.69%, and pollutant emissions by 48.69% in 2012. Also, such lottery shifted new auto purchases towards high-end but less fuel efficient vehicles. In our counterfactual analysis, we show that a progressive tax scheme works better than the lottery system at decreasing fuel consumption and air pollution, and leads to a higher fleet fuel efficiency and less welfare loss.