Are French Households Car-Use Addicts? A microeconomic perspective

This article presents a microeconometric analysis of household car use in France. To characterize car use dependence, the myopic and rational addiction models are estimated using panel data drawn from the French "Car Fleet" survey. Significantly, the assumption of rational addiction to car use cannot be rejected, and is even supported by a plausible estimate of the intertemporal rate of substitution (17%). Furthermore, the rational model yields realistic estimates of the fuel cost- and income-elasticities of household car use, respectively - 0.23 and + 0.10 for the short run, and - 0.37 and + 0.16 for the long run. © 2015 Elsevier Inc.