We study the role of the administrative design of energy subsidy programs aimed at encouraging households' transition to cleaner energy sources. Our context is the universal subsidy for clean cooking gas (LPG) in India - households first purchase LPG at the market price (over-the-counter) and then receive a 'cash-back' subsidy in their bank account. The subsidy varies with the market price such that the effective price (out-of-pocket price net of subsidy) for households does not change.
Using exogenous variation in the LPG market price, which varies in tandem with the international price, and administrative data on LPG purchases by one million households, we find that a 1% increase in over-the-counter LPG price causes a 1.4% decrease in LPG purchase by low-income households, even when the effective price remains unchanged. Household survey data show that low-income households substitute away from LPG towards polluting biomass-based solid fuels by 5% in response to a 1% increase in the LPG market price. Consequently, we estimate that the 'cash-back' subsidy design may worsen neonatal mortality and other relevant health outcomes. The adverse impact of the program design on clean fuel usage weakens when households have more cash on hand, suggesting households' short-term liquidity constraint is the key explanation. Our results, thus, show that the design of energy subsidy programs, in particular the timing of transfers, may have significant implications for the energy transition of liquidity-constrained households.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.