About

Erich Muehlegger is a Professor of Economics at the University of California, Davis. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT, earned in 2005, and a B.A. in Mathematics and Economics from Williams College, obtained in 1997. His research specializes in energy, environment, public finance, and industrial organization. Professor Muehlegger conducts research on the economic implications of consumer behavior, focusing on consumer responses to taxes and financial incentives. His work explores topics such as electric vehicle adoption, the impact of fuel taxes, and the effects of regulatory policies on illegal activity and pollution. He teaches courses in strategy, competition and regulation, markets and market failure, and quantitative analysis and empirical methods.

Research topics

• Economics
• Market economy
• Computer Science
• Environmental science
• Environmental economics
• Ecology
• Business
• Psychology
• Criminology
• Industrial organization
• Marketing
• Engineering
• Labour economics
• Agricultural economics
• Automotive engineering
• Public economics
• Transport engineering
• Microeconomics

Selected publications

• The Effects of Competition in the Retail Gasoline Industry

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-03-01

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  We estimate the effect of competition on incumbent firm pricing by using high frequency price data and the precise geographic location for all gas stations in California.Using an event study design, we find that the entry of a new station is associated with a 2.5 cent decrease in prices at incumbent stores, which equates to a 7% reduction in estimated retail markups.The effects are immediate, persistent, and show no sign of deterrence or limit pricing behavior.In contrast, nearby exit results in precisely estimated null effects on prices with no evidence of predatory pricing in the lead up to the station departure.The results are consistent across all fuel blends and dissipate with station distance.Finally, we explore the asymmetric effects, showing that the difference cannot be attributed to difference in branding, proximity to highway, or data quality idiosyncrasies, although we find suggestive evidence that exit tends to happen in more competitive markets and amongst less heavily trafficked stations.

  PublisherDOI

• The Effects of Competition in the Retail Gasoline Industry

  Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Working Papers · 2025-03-01

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Effects of Competition in the Retail Gasoline Industry

  Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Working Papers · 2025-10-01

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Effects of Competition in the Retail Gasoline Industry

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The End of Neutrality? Fuel Standards, Technology Neutrality, and Stimulating the EV Market

  Economics of Energy and Environmental Policy · 2024-01-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Ideology, Incidence and the Political Economy of Fuel Taxes: Evidence from the California 2018 Proposition 6

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Ideology, Incidence and the Political Economy of Fuel Taxes: Evidence from the California 2018 Proposition 6

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2024-04-01 · 1 citations

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  In 2018, California voters rejected Proposition 6, a ballot initiative that sought to repeal state gasoline taxes and vehicle fees enacted as part of the 2017 Road Repair and Accountability Act.We study the relationship between support for the proposition, political ideology and the economic burdens imposed by the Act.For every hundred dollars of annual per-household imposed costs, we estimate that support for the proposition rose by 3 -9 percentage points.Notably, we find that the relationship between voting and the economic burden of the policy is seven times stronger in the most conservative tracts relative to the most liberal tracts.Since conservative areas in California and elsewhere tend to bear a higher burden from transportation and energy taxes than liberal areas, heterogeneity in the response to economic burdens has important implications for the popular support for environmental taxes and the ongoing policy debate about how to finance future road infrastructure.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How to spend one trillion dollars: the US decarbonization conundrum

  Nature · 2024-10-29 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Economics of Electric Vehicles

  Review of Environmental Economics and Policy · 2023 · 83 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Economics
  • Environmental science
  • Environmental economics

  We examine the private and public economics of electric vehicles (EVs) and discuss when market forces can be expected to produce the optimal path of EV adoption. Privately, consumer cost savings from EVs vary. Some experience net benefits from choosing gasoline cars, even after accounting for EV subsidies. Publicly, we survey the literature documenting the external costs and benefits of EVs and highlight several themes for optimal policy design. These include (1) promoting regional variation in EV policies that align private incentives with social benefits, (2) pursuing a time-path of policies that reflects changing marginal benefits, and (3) rationalizing electricity and gasoline prices to reflect their social marginal cost. On the one hand, research suggests optimal policy be front-loaded and then ramp down over time as industries gain experience in EV production and as charging infrastructure is put in place. On the other hand, as electricity generation becomes cleaner over time, environmental considerations may favor increasing subsidies as the environmental benefits of driving EVs rise relative to conventional vehicles.

  PublisherDOI

• Global Transportation Decarbonization

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2023-07-01

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  A number of policy proposals call for replacing fossil fuels in the name of decarbonization, but these fuels will be difficult to replace due to to their as-yet unrivaled bundle of attributes: abundance, ubiquity, energy density, transportability and cost. There is a growing commitment to electrification as the dominant decarbonization pathway for transportation. While deep electrification is promising for road vehicles in wealthy countries, it will face steep obstacles. In other sectors and in the developing world, it's not even in pole position. Global transportation decarbonization will require decoupling emissions from economic growth, and decoupling emissions from growth will require not only new technologies, but cooperation in governance. The menu of policy options is replete with tradeoffs, particularly as the primacy of energy security and reliability (over emissions abatement) has once again been demonstrated in Europe and elsewhere.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• David Rapson

  36 shared

• Evan Herrnstadt

  Congressional Budget Office

  13 shared

• Justin Marion

  University of California, Santa Cruz

  11 shared

• Daniel Shoag

  10 shared

• Lucas W. Davis

  University of California, Berkeley

  10 shared

• Richard Sweeney

  Boston College

  8 shared

• Joel Slemrod

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  7 shared

• Don Fullerton

  7 shared

Awards & honors

• Institute for Transportation Studies, National Center for Su…
• National Science Foundation, (SB) 1 Research Grant "Electric…
• Institute for Transportation Studies, Senate Bill (SB) 1 Res…
• Institute for Transportation Studies, Senate Bill (SB) 1 Res…
• Institute for Transportation Studies, Senate Bill (SB) 1 Res…