TY  - JOUR
AU  - Borenstein, Severin
AU  - Davis, Lucas W
TI  - The Distributional Effects of U.S. Clean Energy Tax Credits
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 21437
PY  - 2015
Y2  - July 2015
DO  - 10.3386/w21437
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w21437
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w21437.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Severin Borenstein
Haas School of Business
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-1900
Tel: 510/642-3689
E-Mail: severinborenstein@berkeley.edu

Lucas W. Davis
Haas School of Business
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-1900
Tel: 510/642-1651
E-Mail: ldavis@haas.berkeley.edu
M1  - published as Severin Borenstein, Lucas W. Davis. "The Distributional Effects of U.S. Clean Energy Tax Credits," in Jeffrey R. Brown, editor, "Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 30" University of Chicago Press (2016)

AB  - Since 2006, U.S. households have received more than $18 billion in federal income tax credits for weatherizing their homes, installing solar panels, buying hybrid and electric vehicles, and other "clean energy" investments. We use tax return data to examine the socioeconomic characteristics of program recipients. We find that these tax expenditures have gone predominantly to higher-income Americans. The bottom three income quintiles have received about 10% of all credits, while the top quintile has received about 60%. The most extreme is the program aimed at electric vehicles, where we find that the top income quintile has received about 90% of all credits. By comparing to previous work on the distributional consequences of pricing greenhouse gas emissions, we conclude that tax credits are likely to be much less attractive on distributional grounds than market mechanisms to reduce GHGs.
ER  -