DP13270 Incentives for Information Provision: Energy Efficiency in the Spanish Rental Market

Author(s):	Xueying Bian, Natalia Fabra
Publication Date:	October 2018
Date Revised:	March 2020
Keyword(s):	adoption rate, asymmetric information, energy efficiency, rental market
JEL(s):
Programme Areas:	Industrial Organization
Link to this Page:	cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=13270

We build a search model with asymmetric information regarding houses´ energy efficiency. The objective is to shed light on the house owners` incentives to obtain and disclose energy certificates (ECs) in the rental market. Such incentives depend not only on the rent premium for more efficient houses - as has been widely documented - but also on the rent penalty for unlabeled houses. Interestingly, we show that such a penalty is higher the greater the disclosure rate of ECs. The theoretical predictions are empirically quantified in the context of the Spanish rental market.