Sunspots that matter

This paper tests for the effect of weather on solar technology adoption, taking advantage of the fact that sunshine is a direct input factor for solar electricity production. I find that a one standard deviation increase in monthly sunshine hours above the long-term average leads to an approximate 6.2 % growth in the residential solar market over a six-month period. I consider a range of potential mechanisms and find strong evidence for projection bias and salience as key drivers of my results. My findings show that there is an asymmetric response to positive and negative sunshine deviations from the long-term mean and that counties with a high vote share for the green party are particularly affected by these biases

Sunspots that matter: The effect of weather on solar technology adoption

This paper tests for the presence of behavioral biases in household decisions to adopt solar photovoltaic installations using exogenous variation in weather. I find that residential technology uptake responds to exceptional weather, defined as deviations from the long-term mean, in line with the average time gap between decision-making and completion of the installation. In particular, a one standard deviation increase in sunshine hours during the purchase period leads to an approximate increase of 4.7% in weekly solar PV installations. This effect persists in aggregate data. I consider a range of potential mechanisms and find suggestive evidence for projection bias and salience as key drivers of my results.I would like to thank Jerome Adda, Stefan Ambec, Bryan Bollinger, Sylvain ChabeFerret, Antonia Diaz, Andreas Gerster, Ken Gillingham, Sebastian Houde, Andrea Ichino, Martin Kesternich, Matt Kotchen, Matt Neidell, Francois Salanie, Fabiano Schivardi, Joe Shapiro, and seminar participants at the Atlantic Workshop on Energy & Environmental Economics, EMEE, Energy and Climate Conference Toulouse, FAERE, IAERE, Northeast Workshop on Energy Policy & Environmental Economics, Workshop on Economic Theories & Low-Carbon Policies, World Congress of the Econometric Society, European University Institute, Goteborg University, RWI Essen, Toulouse School of Economics, Yale University, and ZEW Mannheim for helpful comments and suggestions. I am also indebted to the Editor and two anonymous referees for their insightful feedback. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant Agreement No 772331). A previous version of this article has been circulated under the name "Projection Bias in Solar Electricity Markets". Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature

(Mis)allocation of Renewable Energy Sources

Policies to incentivize the adoption of renewable energy sources (RES) usually offer little flexibility to adapt to the varying benefits of those sources at different locations within the same jurisdiction. In this paper, we propose a general framework to evaluate the geographical misallocation of RES that is potentially caused by the uniform nature of feed-in-tariffs (FiT). After estimating the dispersion of the marginal benefits from solar production in Germany, we compute the social and private costs from the current configuration of residential solar photovoltaic (PV) plants relative to a reallocation scenario in which regions with a higher PV average productivity are given higher amounts of solar capacity, while keeping the system's total capacity fixed. We find that a 20% solar installation rate and with a conservative value for the social cost of carbon, the total value of solar PV would increase by about 5% relative to the current allocation. In addition, we estimate the size of the transmission capacity between the North and the South of Germany implied by the differences in marginal costs across those regions. Reallocating solar capacity with the possibility of exporting surpluses from the South to the North would yield gains that range from 14 to 22% depending on the rate of solar penetration. A benefit-cost analysis shows that additional transmission can be beneficial if there is sufficient RES capacity reallocated across regions

Health Misinformation During Epidemiological Crises

Health misinformation is more prevalent than ever in the modern age and poses serious risks for those who believe it. Medical fallacies can become especially harmful during periods of widespread disease when the misinformed respond in ways that increase threats to public health. The purpose of this systematic review is to describe and critically appraise the evidence about how health misinformation during endemics and pandemics can influence behaviors and responses, as well as the implications of interventions affecting these behaviors. A systematic search of the literature with inclusion/exclusion criteria using CINAHL Plus with Full Text, MEDLINE, and PsychINFO resulted in an analysis of twenty primary sources. In general, researchers have found that health misinformation has been prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic and endemic outbreaks of Ebola, Zika, and measles. A significant proportion of individuals believe misinformation, and evidence supports that the tendency to believe misinformation is related to predictive factors such as the propensity for conspiracy thinking, decreased literacy skills, increased social media usage, younger age, and fear. Implications of findings for interventions include using social media to promote accurate information, building public trust in the government and healthcare system, and ensuring the public has access to accurate information

Genome-wide analysis identifies 12 loci influencing human reproductive behavior.

The genetic architecture of human reproductive behavior-age at first birth (AFB) and number of children ever born (NEB)-has a strong relationship with fitness, human development, infertility and risk of neuropsychiatric disorders. However, very few genetic loci have been identified, and the underlying mechanisms of AFB and NEB are poorly understood. We report a large genome-wide association study of both sexes including 251,151 individuals for AFB and 343,072 individuals for NEB. We identified 12 independent loci that are significantly associated with AFB and/or NEB in a SNP-based genome-wide association study and 4 additional loci associated in a gene-based effort. These loci harbor genes that are likely to have a role, either directly or by affecting non-local gene expression, in human reproduction and infertility, thereby increasing understanding of these complex traits

The investment effect of fiscal consolidation

This paper investigates the relationship between fiscal consolidation, business plans and firm investment. Based on a detailed narrative of tax changes in Germany covering 40 years of fiscal adjustments, we define and exploit the exogenous variation of tax bills to quantify the effect of tax changes on firm future investment plans as well as on realized investment. We find that firms in the manufacturing sector revise downwards their planned investment by about 4% subsequently to a tax increase equal to 1% of the value added in the total manufacturing industry. On the contrary realized investment growth drops by around 8% at impact. Furthermore we find that income and consumption taxes are most harmful to investment and that firms base their investment plans considering laws currently under discussion, anticipating future tax changes. Not taking into account this anticipation effect would lead to strongly biased estimates

Sunspots that matter

This paper tests for the effect of weather on solar technology adoption, taking advantage of the fact that sunshine is a direct input factor for solar electricity production. I find that a one standard deviation increase in monthly sunshine hours above the long-term average leads to an approximate 6.2 % growth in the residential solar market over a six-month period. I consider a range of potential mechanisms and find strong evidence for projection bias and salience as key drivers of my results. My findings show that there is an asymmetric response to positive and negative sunshine deviations from the long-term mean and that counties with a high vote share for the green party are particularly affected by these biases

Essays in applied microeconometrics : household and firm investment

Defence date: 5 September 2014Examining Board: Prof. Jerome Adda, Supervisor, Università Bocconi; Prof. Antonia Diaz, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid; Prof. Andrea Ichino, EUI; Prof. Fabiano Schivardi, Luiss UniversityThe thesis contains three chapters relating to household and firm investment. The first chapter, coauthored with Silvia Albrizio, investigates the relationship between fiscal consolidation, business plans, and firm investment. Based on a detailed narrative of tax changes in Germany covering 40 years of fiscal adjustments, we define and exploit the exogenous variation of tax bills to quantify the effect of tax changes on firms’ future investment plans as well as on realized investment. We find that firms in the manufacturing sector revise downward both planned and realized investment subsequently to tax adjustments. Furthermore we find that income and consumption taxes are most harmful to investment and that firms base their investment plans considering laws currently under discussion, anticipating future tax changes. In the second chapter, I investigate if irreversible household investment decisions are affected by behavioral factors, namely Projection Bias (Loewenstein, O’Donoghue, and Rabin (2003)). I use detailed weather data to test if exceptional sunny months have a positive and significant impact on solar photovoltaic (PV) adoption at county level and interpret my findings as strong support for the Projection bias hypothesis given that other weather shocks (temperature, rain, and snow) do not show a significant impact. Results are robust to a wide variety of robustness checks and shock definitions. Elaborating on heterogeneity, I confirm that political ideology can play an important role in expectation formation: counties with higher share of Green voters are more perceptive to Projection Bias in their solar investment decisions. The final chapter investigates the role of economic policy for the installation of solar PV in Germany. After empirically evaluating the variables that play a key role in the household investment decision, I construct a dynamic stochastic discrete choice model of technology adoption to evaluate how different policy dimensions affect the household investment choice and aggregate technology uptake. The simulation exercise shows that an increase in the annual tariff reduction for new installations (degression rate) has the biggest negative impact on investment