James M. Sallee

Automobile Fuel Economy Standards: Impacts, Efficiency, and Alternatives

This article discusses automobile fuel economy standards in the United States and other countries. We first describe how these programs affect the automobile market, including impacts on fuel consumption and other dimensions of the vehicle fleet. We then review two different methodologies for assessing the costs of fuel economy programs—engineering and market-based approaches—and discuss what the results of these assessments imply for policy. Next we compare the welfare effects of fuel economy standards and fuel taxes and discuss whether these two types of policies can be complementary. Finally, we review arguments for transitioning away from fuel economy regulations and toward a “feebate” system, a policy approach that imposes fees on vehicles that are fuel inefficient and provides rebates to those that are fuel efficient.

The Taxation of Fuel Economy

Policy makers have instituted a variety of fuel economy tax policies—polices that tax or subsidize new vehicle purchases on the basis of fuel economy performance—in the hopes of improving fleet fuel economy and reducing gasoline consumption. This article reviews existing policies and concludes that while they do work to improve vehicle fuel economy, the same goals could be achieved at a lower cost to society if policy makers instead directly taxed fuel. Fuel economy taxation, as it is currently practiced, invites several forms of gaming that could be eliminated by policy changes. Thus, even if policy makers prefer fuel economy taxation over fuel taxes for reasons other than efficiency, there are still potential efficiency gains from reform.

A Unifying Model of How the Tax System and Generally Accepted Accounting Principles Affect Corporate Behavior

This paper models the impact of the tax system and GAAP on the real and financial reporting decisions of corporations. It provides a first step toward joint evaluation of taxation and financial reporting in the standard economic analyses of corporate behavior. The key finding is that value arises from real decisions that provide firms with discretion in their tax and financial reporting. This desire for flexibility modifies the optimal decisions of firms, in theory, and we provide examples that illustrate this behavior in the real world.

On the Optimal Allocation of Students and Resources in a System of Higher Education

Abstract We model the social planners decision to establish universities and populate them with students and resources, given a distribution of student ability and a limited pool of resources for higher education. If student ability and school resources are complements, and if there is a fixed cost to establishing a school, then the optimal allocation will involve a tiered system of higher education that sorts students by ability. In contrast to previous research, we show this tiered system is optimal even in the absence of peer effects. In considering where to locate students, the planner balances the benefit of providing students with more resources against the congestion costs of overcrowding schools. Nearly identical students who are close to the margin of entry to a higher or lower tier will experience discrete gaps in education quality. In considering how many universities to establish, the planner will balance the value of more precise tailoring against the cost of establishing additional schools. The planners inability to perfectly tailor education quality will result in both winners and losers. Our model also makes predictions about how university systems that serve different populations should vary. Larger systems will produce more per dollar of expenditures and more education per student, due to economies of scale.

The Intergenerational Transmission of Automobile Brand Preferences

We document a strong correlation in the brand of automobile chosen by parents and their adult children, using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. This correlation could represent transmission of brand preferences across generations, or it could result from correlation in family characteristics that determine brand choice. We present a variety of empirical specifications that lend support to the former interpretation and to a mechanism that relies at least in part on state dependence. We then discuss implications of intergenerational brand preference transmission for automakers’ product‐line strategies and for the strategic pricing of vehicles to different age groups.

Who Loses when Prices are Negotiated? An Analysis of the New Car Market†

We establish that there are large and persistent differences in final transaction prices for identical new cars, and that demographic characteristics explain at least 20% of the observed variation. Older consumers perform progressively worse in negotiations, and the age premium is greater for women than for men. Our results suggest that the complex nature of vehicle transactions leads to price dispersion in this market, and that the worst performing groups—older women—have the lowest rates of market participation. We conjecture that the results are driven by the sharp increases in womens education and labor force participation in recent decades.

Who Loses when Prices are Negotiated? An Analysis of the New Car Market: WHO LOSES WHEN PRICES ARE NEGOTIATED?

We establish that there are large and persistent differences in final transaction prices for identical new cars, and that demographic characteristics explain at least 20% of the observed variation. Older consumers perform progressively worse in negotiations, and the age premium is greater for women than for men. Our results suggest that the complex nature of vehicle transactions leads to price dispersion in this market, and that the worst performing groups—older women—have the lowest rates of market participation. We conjecture that the results are driven by the sharp increases in womens education and labor force participation in recent decades.