School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom.
Walker Institute for Climate System Research, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2017 Oct 11;12(10):e0185538. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0185538. eCollection 2017.
Consumption surveys often record zero purchases of a good because of a short observation window. Measures of distribution are then precluded and only mean consumption rates can be inferred. We show that Propensity Score Matching can be applied to recover the distribution of consumption rates. We demonstrate the method using the UK National Travel Survey, in which c.40% of motorist households purchase no fuel. Estimated consumption rates are plausible judging by households' annual mileages, and highly skewed. We apply the same approach to estimate CO2 emissions and outcomes of a carbon cap or tax. Reliance on means apparently distorts analysis of such policies because of skewness of the underlying distributions. The regressiveness of a simple tax or cap is overstated, and redistributive features of a revenue-neutral policy are understated.
消费调查经常因为观察窗口较短而记录到某种商品的零购买记录。因此,分配措施被排除在外,只能推断出平均消费率。我们表明,倾向得分匹配可以用于恢复消费率的分布。我们使用英国国家旅行调查来演示该方法,在该调查中,约 40%的驾车家庭不购买燃料。根据家庭的年里程数来判断,估计的消费率是合理的,而且高度偏态。我们应用相同的方法来估计 CO2 排放以及碳上限或税的结果。由于基础分布的偏态,对这些政策的分析显然依赖于均值,这会导致分析结果失真。简单税收或上限的累进性被夸大,而收入中性政策的再分配特征则被低估。