Risk and rewards of residential energy efficiency

The four essays collected in this PhD thesis concern whether the market and
non-market solutions adopted by the Dutch government lead to a better
performance of the energy efficient dwellings in the Dutch residential market. In
the first essay we analyze the biggest information policy the energy performance
certificates (EPCs) and examine whether it has served as means to reduce the
information asymmetry among market participants during the sale of homes.
In the second essay I measure the extent to which energy efficiency benefits are
priced in the rental housing market, using a large dataset on the Dutch rental
market. In the third essay we establish whether energy performance certification
can help banks to improve conventional mortgage risk models in predicting
future arrears. And, in the fourth essay we evaluate the welfare effects of energy
efficiency subsidies within the Dutch housing market.