The Price Elasticity of Heating and Cooling Energy Demand: A Meta-Analysis

We follow a registered pre-analysis plan (\href{https://osf.io/zdche}{https://osf.io/zdche}) to create a large meta-dataset from the international literature on price elasticities of energy demand for heating and cooling of households and businesses. The dataset comprises 442 primary studies with more than 4971 price elasticity estimates, their standard errors as well as relevant study and observation characteristics. We show that there is substantial publication bias with insignificant or positive elasticities being underreported. Thus, the simple average of all estimates exaggerates the true short and long-run elasticities. Correcting for this bias, the price elasticities are much closer to zero, indicating a weaker effect of energy price rises on heating and cooling energy demand than previously expected.