Selection on Welfare Gains: Experimental Evidence from Electricity Plan Choice

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ito, Koichiro; Ida, Takanori; Tanaka, Makoto
• 署名单位: University of Chicago; National Bureau of Economic Research; Kyoto University; National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.20210150
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 2937-2973
• 关键词: instrumental variables; MARKETS; inertia; cost

摘要

We study a problem in which policymakers need to screen self- selected individuals by unobserved heterogeneity in social welfare gains from a policy intervention. In our framework, the marginal treatment effects and marginal treatment responses arise as key statistics to characterize social welfare. We apply this framework to a randomized field experiment on electricity plan choice. Consumers were offered welfare- improving dynamic pricing with randomly assigned take- up incentives. We find that price- elastic consumers-who generate larger welfare gains-are more likely to self- select. Our counterfactual simulations quantify the optimal take- up incentives that exploit observed and unobserved heterogeneity in selection and welfare gains.