Since household wealth surveys have been widely used to study saving and other issues, it is important to examine the reliability of the various survey estimates of wealth. In this paper the authors assess the quality characteristics of the National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Men and the Retirement History Survey, as compared to the 1983 Survey of Consumer Finances. We find that the NLS and especially the RHS underreport wealth and wealth concentration. The underestimates of wealth held in the form of common stock, business equity, and investment real estate equity are substantial. The principal problem lies in underrepresentation of both tails of the wealth and income distributions, with the consequences of underrepresenting the upper tail being especially serious for wealth measurement. We examine several potential reasons for the underrepresentation.
Time-of-use (TOU) pricing has emerged in recent years as a popular rate program, offering utilities both a more efficient pricing mechanism and a tool for load management. Initial experiments with TOUpricing were generally designed to provide evidence on customer response to mandatory TOU rates, while residential TOU rates are currently being applied on a voluntary basis. In this paper evidence is provided on customer response in Pacific Gas and Electric ‘s voluntary TOUrate experiment. Comparing the results to those obtained in earlier mandatory experiments, volunteers are found to have a greater ability to shift usage in response to TOU rates than comparable customers on mandatory rates.
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