How Incentive Design Shapes Pass-Through: Evidence from the U.S. Electric Vehicle Market
We study the pass-through of U.S. state electric vehicle incentives using transaction-level data and a newly assembled dataset of state programs from 2012–2020. Average pass-through is approximately full, but this aggregate estimate conceals substantial heterogeneity. We find that pass-through varies sharply across program designs and buyer characteristics. Transaction prices decrease for purchases and point-of-transaction incentives, resulting in more than full pass-through, while for leases, incentives are substantially eroded by higher transaction prices. Pass-through also varies non-monotonically with buyer income, with no evidence that higher- income buyers capture a larger share of the marginal incentive dollar.
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