Peter Lugthart

Peter Lugthart, Benjamin B. Lockwood, Arthur van Benthem (Working), Optimal Shared Micromobility Taxes with Distributional Concerns.

Abstract: Dockless, shared e-bikes and e-scooters are a rapidly-growing segment of the local transportation market despite being taxed at higher rates per mile of travel than many conventional transportation modes, including motor vehicles. This paper asks what the optimal tax rate for shared bikes and e-scooters would be when accounting for environmental externalities, internalities caused by biased beliefs about accident risk, and redistribution. We derive a sufficient-statistics model that describes how optimal tax rates depend on both extensive-margin (number of trips) and intensive-margin (duration of trips) demand responses to price changes, as well as the income of bike and e-scooter users, internalities, and net externalities relative to other travel modes. We estimate the parameters of this model using trip-level data from a large bike and e-scooter company, and find that in many U.S. cities, use of its vehicles is concentrated among low-income individuals. A nationwide dataset of emergency department admissions shows that e-scooter use generates substantial social costs in terms of healthcare expenditures and lost quality of life due to injury. The optimal tax weighs these costs against environmental benefits and redistributive concerns.

Peter Lugthart (Work In Progress), Energy efficiency disclosure in multifamily housing.

Abstract: Asymmetric information between home buyers and sellers may reduce owners’ incentives to invest in energy-conserving upgrades: when buyers cannot perfectly differentiate high- and low-efficiency buildings, sellers are unable to fully pass on the up-front cost of energy-related upgrades, and so face weaker incentives to make these upgrades. Local governments in many large U.S. cities have correspondingly passed legislation requiring public disclosure of energy use for large buildings. Do these laws improve energy efficiency, and if so, why? This paper first simulates a model of building owners’ dynamic decision about when and how much to invest in upgrading their building’s energy efficiency to show that steady-state building energy use is sensitive to information provision only when the extent of information provision about building efficiency affects the capitalization of energy efficiency in unit prices. I therefore investigate whether energy disclosure laws in New York City have affected unit prices, sale frequencies, and efficiency-related renovations in regulated multifamily buildings, using a regression discontinuity design. The effect of the policy on unit prices and sales is null and imprecise, which makes it difficult to conclude that the policy provided new information to buyers, but disclosure caused a 60% increase in boiler-related renovations in between 2016 and 2020.

Peter Lugthart (Working), The environmental costs and consumer benefits of competitive smog check markets [Job Market Paper].

Abstract: Regulators often delegate enforcement to third-party firms that sell compliance services. Competitive markets for these services can improve buyers’ choices but encourage sellers to help buyers evade regulations. I quantify this tradeoff in the Texas market for passenger vehicle emissions tests, using administrative data from 2002 – 2024 to detect more than 9 million (7%) falsified tests at thousands of firms. An entry event study shows that a 47% increase in nearby competitors raises incumbent cheating by 6.3%. Cheating drivers skip repairs that would prevent $27–$54 worth of annual air pollution per car. An equilibrium model evaluates welfare, capturing bribe setting by spatially-differentiated firms and consumers’ dynamic choices of repairs, cheating, and fair tests. A counterfactual monopolist eliminates cheating but wishes to close locations if it faces economies of scale. Fixing location density near the level regulators typically choose in monopoly markets lowers drivers’ utility by more than 100 times the social benefit of reduced pollution. Doubling firm-level cheating penalties in the status quo enforcement regime reduces cheating by 60.3% at much lower cost to drivers.