Management Talk: Jing Li (Harvard)

Event time: 
Friday, February 3, 2017 - 11:30am
Location: 
Classroom 4210 See map
165 Whitney Avenue
Event description: 
Eli Seminar Series
Presents
 
Jing Li
PhD Candidate in Economics (Expected May 2017)
Harvard University
 
 
“Compatibility and Investment in the U.S. Electric Vehicle Market”
 
Competing standards often proliferate in the early years of product markets, potentially leading to socially inefficient investment. This paper studies the effect of compatibility in the U.S. electric vehicle market, which has grown ten-fold in its first five years but has three incompatible standards for charging stations. I develop and estimate a structural model of consumer vehicle choice and car manufacturer investment that demonstrates the ambiguous impact of mandating compatibility standards on market outcomes and welfare. Firms under incompatible standards may make investments in charging stations that primarily steal business from rivals and do not generate social benefits sufficient to justify their costs. But compatibility may lead to underinvestment since the benefits from one firm’s investments spill over to other firms. I estimate my model using U.S. data from 2011 to 2015 on vehicle registrations and charging station investment and identify demand elasticities with variation in federal and state subsidy policies. Counterfactual simulations show that mandating compatibility in charging standards would decrease duplicative investment in charging stations by car manufacturers and increase the size of the electric vehicle market.
 
 
Friday, February 3, 2017
11:30a.m. – 1:00p.m.
165 Whitney Ave
Classroom 4210