Of 26 applicants, 4th year PhD student, Nafisa Lohawala has been selected as one of three recipients of the 2020 National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Pre-Doctoral Fellowship on Energy Economics. Fellowship recipients are expected to pursue academic research that is primarily related to energy economics, with an emphasis on issues that are relevant to energy markets and policy in the United States. The award provides a stipend, a tuition payment, and a research fund to support costs such as travel expenses to professional meetings. The fellows are also invited to the NBER Summer Institute workshop on Environmental and Energy Economics.
Nafisa will use this fellowship to pursue research for her paper entitled Roadblock or Accelerator? Effect of Electric Vehicle Subsidy Elimination. Federal and state governments in many countries use tax incentive programs to accelerate the diffusion of alternative energy vehicles. These programs use different approaches to put an end date to the programs, which can create complicated incentives for manufacturers. Nafisa’s paper develops and estimates a dynamic model of the electric vehicle industry, and demonstrates the ambiguous effect of subsidy elimination designs on technology diffusion. Nafisa is seriously considering this work for her job market paper.
