Robert Hahn is a visiting professor and former director of economics at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University and a distinguished senior fellow at the Technology Policy Institute. He is also a senior policy scholar at the Georgetown University Center for Business and Public Policy. Hahn has served on the faculties of Harvard and Carnegie Mellon, and has also had senior appointments at AEI and Brookings.
Featured publications & articles
Efficiency and Equity Impacts of Energy Subsidies
Economic theory suggests that energy subsidies can lead to excessive consumption and environmental degradation. However, the precise impact of energy subsidies is not well understood. We analyze a large energy subsidy: the California Alternate Rates for Energy (CARE). CARE provides a price reduction for low-income consumers of natural gas and electricity. Using a natural field experiment, we estimate the price elasticity of demand for natural gas to be about -0.35 for CARE customers.
Equity in Cost-Benefit Analysis
One key way that many governments around the world incorporate scientific research into policy-making is through cost-benefit analysis (CBA). But despite well-established practices for rigorous estimation of the pros and cons of policies, there is room to improve, particularly in characterizing difficult-to-measure benefits and the distribution of the costs and benefits across different segments of society. In this regard, announcements by US President Biden, if brought to fruition, could have far-reaching implications for how CBA is used in government decision-making.
Promoting customer engagement: A new trend in utility regulation
This paper traces a new development in regulation that encourages utilities to engage more directly with their customers. We make four contributions: First, we perform a comprehensive analysis of how regulators are using customer engagement, and offer a simple model for understanding different customer engagement initiatives. Second, we review assessments of customer engagement. We find that there are no quantitative, empirically robust assessments of the effectiveness of customer…