Quartz featured a paper that appears in the July issue of American Economic Journal: Applied Economics about how the “cash for clunkers” program actually hurt car sales. The paper by researchers Mark Hoekstra, Steven Puller, and Jeremy West said the $3 billion stimulus program’s efficiency requirement convinced people to buy smaller, less expensive cars — especially the popular Toyota Corolla — than they otherwise would have had the incentives never existed, thus reducing new vehicle spending by $5 billion below what it would have been.