Recent are_ucb_rw items

Water Works: Causes and Consequences of Safe Drinking Water in America

Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Since the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act, the U.S. has spent \$2 trillion to provide safe drinking water, yet drinking water for 10--20 percent of Americans violates standards. We study trends, causes, and consequences of U.S. drinking water pollution, using 266 million readings on 1,250 pollutants over decades that we obtained from 48 states via dozens of Freedom of Information Act and associated requests. We link pollution to administrative Medicare data on older Americans' health outcomes. Three findings emerge. First, U.S. drinking water pollution has declined rapidly; the share of readings exceeding current health standards fell by half from 2003--2019. Unregulated pollutants declined more slowly. Low-income areas have higher pollution; Black and Hispanic communities have more complex patterns. Second, loans provided by the Safe Drinking Water Act to water systems reduce pollution. At the estimated average loan cost-effectiveness, these loans could eliminate pollution above...

No More Grading: Incentive Compatible Peer Assessment in a Project-Based Course

Fri, 3 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We describe a system for grading collaborative student work that hasbeen developed and refined over eight years of a project-basedundergraduate course. Students complete four team projects persemester, with teams reassigned each round. After each project, everystudent evaluates other teams' deliverables, assesses their ownteammates' contributions, and predicts the scores they themselves willreceive. These three streams of assessment data are combined usingsingular value decomposition (SVD) applied to residualized evaluationmatrices. Residualization removes evaluator-specific biases (thetendency to rate generously or harshly); SVD then extracts thedominant latent quality axis from the bias-corrected data, weightingquestions by their informativeness. Scores are aggregated via mediansfor robustness to outlier evaluators. Each student's composite gradereflects five components: team quality, individual contribution asassessed by teammates, evaluator discrimination (rewarding carefulassessment...

Credit & Welfare Across the Lean Season

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Consumption expenditures in rural areas of low-income countries are highly variable across seasons, yet the literature still lacks a standard framework for asking whether seasonal poverty reflects local credit market failure or poor integration with the broader economy. We develop an intertemporal model of farmers’ portfolio choices under seasonal price risk and borrowing constraints, and derive a sign diagnostic: The amount a farmer is willing to pay for a small risk-free bond (call this price q) must rise in response to a positive income shock if credit constraints bind, but fall if precautionary motives dominate. We apply this framework to a randomized post-harvest loan program in Gombe, Nigeria, and supplement the experiment by also collecting high-frequency data on prices, stocks, and expenditures. The loan sharply reduces the marginal utility of expenditure around delivery, but q never rises over the full follow-up. Precautionary savings, not credit constraints, govern the...

The Effects of "Buy American": Electric Vehicles and the Inflation Reduction Act

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We provide the first ex post microeconomic welfare analysis of the electric vehicle (EV) tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Relative to pre-IRA policy, the credits generated $1.96 in domestic benefits per dollar of government spending, with taxpayer cost of $36,500 per additional EV. Relative to having no EV credits, they yielded $1.11 in domestic benefits per dollar of government spending. A leasing loophole that sidestepped domestic content rules created negative domestic benefits. A prominent example of green industrial policy, the credits harmed foreign countries by shifting surplus to domestic producers and helped them by decreasing CO2 emissions.

Consumer Demand with Price Aggregators and Low-Rank Cross-Price Effects

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Consumer Demand with Price Aggregators and Low-Rank Cross-Price Effects

Airport Arrivals and Impacts on the Local Hospitality Sector:Evidence from Greater Los Angeles

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This report presents a detailed analysis of airport arrivals and local economic impact for the Los Angeles five-airport region (LAX, BUR, SNA, ONT, LGB) over 2015–2024. It integrates three components: (1) regression models linking final-destination arrivals to hotel room revenue and accommodation-sector GDP; (2) a specification search identifying the optimal lag structure for monthly data; and (3) an event study identifying ten statistically significant turning and inflection points over the decade.

Community Benefits of Anchor Enterprises: Evidence from California Utility Operations

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This report quantifies how a single large employer’s local payrolls drives three critical dimensions of the San Luis Obispo (SLO) and Santa Barbara (SB) county economy: residential home prices, real estate sector output, and the cost of outstanding municipal debt. The analysis covers 28 ZIP codes from 2015Q1 through 2024Q4 (947 ZIP-quarter observations) and uses average annual compensation from the Diablo Canyon Power Plant (DCPP) workforce as the primary salary proxy — an exogenously determined income anchor in a region with limited other large employers. All models are estimated with HC1-robust ordinary least squares (OLS), and the preferred specification for each outcome uses ZIP code fixed effects (FE) to isolate within-locality, over-time salary effects.

Deep Learning Projects Jurisdiction of New and Proposed Clean Water Act Regulation

Mon, 9 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Projecting the effects of proposed policy reforms is challenging because no outcome data exist for regulations that governments have not yet implemented. We propose an ex ante deep learning framework that can project effects of proposed reforms by mapping outcomes observed under past regulations onto the legal criteria of proposed future policies (i.e., by “relabeling”). We apply this framework to study changes in jurisdiction of the US Clean Water Act (CWA). We compare our ex ante deep learning projection of jurisdiction under the Supreme Court’s Sackett decision against widely used projections from domain experts. Ex ante machine learning generates exceptional performance improvements over the leading domain expert model that the US Environmental Protection Agency currently uses, with 65 times more accurate identification of jurisdictional sites. We also develop an ex post deep learning model trained with data after policy implementation. Ex post deep learning performs...

Testing Parametric Distribution Family Assumptions via Differences in Differential Entropy

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Testing Parametric Distribution Family Assumptions via Differences in Differential Entropy

Transboundary Livestock Disease Control: Insights from the PRC and other Greater Mekong Subregion Countries

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI, H5N1) is the most recent example of a legacy of Transboundary Animal Diseases (TADs) that have challenged the agro-food economy and public health for millennia. As the world economy becomes more highly integrated, and as the aggregate economic value of both the agro-food economy and human life continue to rise, so does the economic risk posed by TADs. These risks are especially acute in the case of TADs with mutagenic potential for animal to human (zoonotic) and human to human transmission. Estimates from the SARS epidemic (World Bank:2006) suggest that economic damages from a serious future pandemic could be measured in trillions of dollars, and some biologists see the emergence of such diseases as relatively inevitable, much like seismic risk in earthquake prone regions.

Antimicrobial resistance operates within the same animal-health system and conditions the outcomes of transboundary events. Recent global evidence indicates...

Has California Tamed the “Duck Curve”? Lessons After a Decade-Plus of Experience

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The sharp decline in the cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) technology has led to a dramatic increase in its global deployment over the past decade. In California, a pioneer in renewable energy adoption, solar generation has increased nearly ten-fold, creating significant challenges for grid integration—most notably exemplified by the so-called “duck curve.” This review examines the state’s evolving strategies for managing an increasingly solar-dominant grid in a cost-effective manner. We highlight two key strategies. First, with procurement mandates and rebate incentives, California has strategically invested in and expanded battery energy storage systems, enabling the capture and dispatch of excess solar power during peak net load hours as a cleaner and more flexible alternative to natural gas. Second, electricity interchange, through the real-time Western Energy Imbalance Market, has enhanced operational flexibility and supported more efficient solar integration in California....

Livestock Risks and Control Measures for Antimicrobial Resistance in the Greater Mekong Subregion

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper provides an overview of risks and control measures for Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) related to the livestock sector in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS). Globally, the diffusion of antimicrobial use (AMU) has expanded dramatically over recent decades, remains unequally distributed (especially between developed and developing countries), but is growing most rapidly in emerging economies like those of the GMS. At the same time, these regions exhibit the highest growth rates of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), indicating that they should be primary candidates for more determined domestic and transboundary disease risk management and control measures.

This review is intended to support greater public awareness and policy activism in addressing AMU/AMR risk, promoting expansion of cattle and other agrifood trade between CMS countries and the PRC. Based on a global review of AMR risk, we offer recommendations for risk mitigation in GMS livestock husbandry and marketing...

Where is Pollution Moving? Environmental Markets and Environmental Justice

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Where is Pollution Moving? Environmental Markets and Environmental Justice

Pollution Trends and US Environmental Policy: Lessons from the Last Half Century

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article proposes and evaluates four hypotheses about US pollution and environmental policy over the last half century. First, air and water pollution have declined substantially, although greenhouse gas emissions have not. Second, environmental policy explains a large share of these trends. Third, much of the regulation of air and drinking water pollution has benefits that exceed costs, although the evidence for surface water pollution regulation is less clear. Fourth, while the distribution of pollution across social groups is unequal, market-based environmental policies and command-and-control policies do not appear to produce systematically different distributions of environmental outcomes. I also discuss recent innovations in methods and data that can be used to evaluate pollution trends and policies, including the increased use of environmental administrative data, statistical cost-benefit comparisons, analysis of previously understudied policies, more sophisticated...

Spatial Environmental Economics

Fri, 5 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

How do environmental goods and policies shape spatial patterns of economic activity? How will climate change modify these impacts over the coming decades? How do agglomeration, commuting, and other spatial forces and policies affect environmental quality? We distill theoretical and empirical research linking urban, regional, and spatial economics to the environment. We present stylized facts on spatial environmental economics, describe insights from canonical environmental models and spatial models, and discuss the building blocks for papers and the research frontier in enviro-spatial economics. Most enviro-spatial research remains bifurcated into either primarily environmental or spatial papers. Research is only beginning to realize potential insights from more closely combining spatial and environmental approaches.

Globalization and the Environment

Fri, 5 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

How should international economic policy address climate change? Does trade cause deforestation and endangered species depletion? How does globalization affect air and water pollution? Do trade and investment create a race to the bottom in environmental policy? How important are environmental impacts of transporting goods? We review theory and empirical work linking international trade and the environment with a focus on recent work and methods. We discuss the literature linking trade to local and global pollutants, the impact of emissions from transportation, the effect of trade on the sustainability of renewable resources, and the interaction between trade and climate policy. To shape our review, we present nine new stylized facts that, together with our review of past work, highlight questions for future research.

The gains from international carbon trade and the ranking of suboptimal climate policies

Fri, 22 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Recently discussed international climate policies are suboptimal and do not include international trade in carbon permits. My estimate of the gains from reallocating abatement distinguishes between “fiat gains” that can be achieved by using public information to reallocate quotas, and ``market gains” that require a mechanism to reveal private or non-verifiable information. I estimate that market gains would reduce abatement costs by 7\% at an abatement target of 40\%, but this would finance only a 1\% increase in abatement. The suboptimality of policy targets favors quotas over taxes, but the lack of international trade swamps this effect, favoring taxes.

Is Air Pollution Regulation Too Lenient? Evidence from US Offset Markets

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Is Air Pollution Regulation Too Lenient? Evidence from US Offset Markets

Electricity Sector Reform in China: Progress, Performance and Challenges

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Electricity Sector Reform in China: Progress, Performance and Challenges

Risk sharing tests and covariate shocks: Drought, Floods, and Pests in Uganda

Tue, 8 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The hallmark of full risk sharing is that agents' marginal utilities of expenditure (MUEs) have a simple factor structure; a Pareto weight is divided by an aggregate price. Take logarithms and full risk-sharing can be easily tested using panel data with two-way fixed effects. The catch is that we don't directly observe MUEs, and must infer these using data on consumption expenditures. The standard approach to this inference problem is to assume some form of homothetic utility, in which case the MUE is a function of total expenditures and a single price index, and all demands have unit price elasticities. This approach works well when the shocks being tested affect agents' budgets without changing prices; i.e., when the shocks are idiosyncratic. But "covariate" shocks may change relative prices, in which case the standard risk-sharing tests which assume that no demands are inelastic will deliver apparently perverse results.

What is the class of utility structures that...

Assessing Targeting Peformance: The Case of Ghana’s LEAP Program

Wed, 10 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Assessing Targeting Peformance: The Case of Ghana’s LEAP Program

Do Earmarks Target Low-Income and Minority Communities? Evidence from US Drinking Water

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The quality and inequality of US drinking water investments have gained attention after recent environmental disasters in Flint, Michigan, and elsewhere. We compare the formula-based targeting of subsidized loans provided under the Safe Drinking Water Act with the targeting of congressional drinking water earmarks (``pork barrel'' spending). Earmarks are often critiqued for potentially privileging wealthier and more politically connected communities. We find that earmarks target Black, Hispanic, and low-income communities, partly due to targeting water systems serving large populations. Earmark and loan targeting differ significantly across all the demographics we analyze. Compared to Safe Drinking Water Act loans, earmarks disproportionately target Hispanic communities but not Black or low-income communities.

Institutions, Comparative Advantage, and the Environment

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This paper proposes that strong financial, judicial, and labor market institutions provide comparative advantage in clean industries, and thereby improve a country’s environmental quality. Five complementary tests support this hypothesis. First, industries that depend on institutions are disproportionately clean. Second, strong institutions increase relative exports in clean industries, even conditional on environmental regulation and factor endowments. Third, an industry’s complexity helps explain the link between institutions and clean goods. Fourth, a quantitative general equilibrium model indicates that strengthening a country’s institutions decreases its pollution through relocating dirty industries abroad, though increases pollution in other countries. Fifth, cross-country differences in the composition of output between clean and dirty industries explain more of the global distribution of emissions than differences in the techniques used for production do. The comparative...

Contract Terms, Employment Shocks, andDefault in Credit Cards

Mon, 8 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Contract Terms, Employment Shocks, andDefault in Credit Cards

An Information-Theoretic Method for Identifying Effective Treatments and Policies at the Beginning of a Pandemic

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Background: Identifying effective treatments and policies early in a pandemic is challenging because only limited and noisy data are available, and biological processes are unknown or uncertain. Consequently, classical statistical procedures may not work or require strong structural assumptions. An information-theoretic approach can overcome these problems and identify effective treatments and policies. The efficacy of this approach is illustrated using a study conducted at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: An information-theoretic inferential approach with and without prior information was applied to the limited data available in the second month (April 24, 2020) of the COVID-19 pandemic. For comparison, a second statistical analysis used a large sample with millions of observations available at the end of the pandemic’s pre-vaccination period (mid-December 2020).

Results: Even with...

Information Recovery in Complex Economic Systems

Mon, 21 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Information Recovery in Complex Economic Systems

Anticipatory Effects of Regulating the Commons

Fri, 18 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We study the regulation of common-pool resources under long implementation horizons. First, we show that future regulation can induce either anticipatory compliance or perverse incentives to accelerate extraction (a "Green Paradox''). Then, we evaluate the early effects of a major groundwater regulation in California that does not yet bind. We assemble new data and compare within pairs of neighboring agencies that face varying restrictions on extraction. Differences in future regulation do not affect measures of water-intensive investments or groundwater extraction today. This lack of anticipatory response in either direction can be explained by time preferences: high private discount rates and/or a long implementation horizon dissipate any anticipatory effects. Common-pool resources under open access face a lower risk of perverse incentives than excludable resources, but private actors still may not comply in advance.

The Dynamic Impacts of Pricing Groundwater

Wed, 16 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This paper evaluates own-price dynamics in taxing environmental externalities. We exploit a natural experiment that exposed some firms to a large and persistent price increase for groundwater, a setting characterized by incomplete markets. Using five years of post-treatment data on farm-level water use, we find that water conservation doubles between the first and fifth year of the tax. Failure to account for dynamics in policies designed to manage groundwater will mischaracterize the price elasticity of demand and introduce efficiency costs.

The Changing Economics of China’s Electricity System: Why Renewables and Electricity Storage may be a Lower Cost Way to Meet Demand Growth than Coal

Sat, 15 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Concerns around reliability in China’s electricity sector have rekindled interest in a traditional solution: building more coal-fired generation. However, over the past decade China’s electricity sector has seen significant changes in supply costs, demand patterns, and regulation and markets over the past decade, with falling costs for renewable and storage generation, “peakier” demand, and the creation of initial wholesale markets. These changes suggest that traditional approaches to evaluating the economics of different supply options may be outdated. This paper illustrates how a net capacity cost metric – fixed costs minus net market revenues – might be better suited to evaluating supply options in China. Using a simplified example with recent resource cost data, the paper illustrates how, with a net capacity cost metric, solar PV and electricity storage may be a more cost-effective option for meeting demand growth than coal-fired generation.

Does Combating Corruption Reduce Clientelism?

Tue, 16 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Does Combating Corruption Reduce Clientelism?

Space Exploration: The Role for Public-Private Research and Development Partnerships

Mon, 9 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Space Exploration: The Role for Public-Private Research and Development Partnerships

Spatial Procurement of Farm products and the Supply of Processed Foods: Application to the Tomato Processing Industry

Thu, 5 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Increased transportation and logistical costs in agricultural markets have affected the spatial allocation of production in the agricultural and food sectors of the economy. We develop a spatial model of farm product procurement by a food processor, designed to capture the effects of supply-chain disruptions on the spatial procurement of farm products in the processed food sector. We use detailed data on production and procurement by a large California tomato processor to estimate the key parameters of the model which allow us to calculate the price elasticity of supply for California tomato paste production and describe how changes in energy prices and transportation costs for primary agricultural products affect the supply of processed food.

Regulating Untaxable Externalities: Are Vehicle Air Pollution Standards Effective and Efficient?

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

What is a feasible and efficient policy to regulate air pollution from vehicles? A Pigouvian tax is technologically infeasible. Most countries instead rely on exhaust standards that limit air pollution emissions per mile for new vehicles. We assess the effectiveness and efficiency of these standards, which are the centerpiece of US Clean Air Act regulation of transportation, and counterfactual policies. We show that the air pollution emissions per mile of new US vehicles has fallen spectacularly, by over 99 percent, since standards began in 1967. Several research designs with a half century of data suggest that exhaust standards have caused most of this decline. Yet exhaust standards are not cost-effective in part because they fail to encourage scrap of older vehicles, which account for the majority of emissions. To study counterfactual policies, we develop an analytical and a quantitative model of the vehicle fleet. Analysis of these models suggests that tighter exhaust standards...

Efficient market versus regulatory capture: a political economy assessment of power market reform in China

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

China began implementing market-based economic dispatch through power sector reform in 2015, but the reform has encountered some political and economic challenges. This paper identifies the reform’s efficiency changes and explores and quantifies the influences of market-driven and politically driven mechanisms behind these changes, employing a partial market equilibrium model integrating high-frequency data in southern China. We found that the dispatch transition improves the overall efficiency, but regulatory capture in provincial markets limits its full potential. The preference for local enterprises over central state-owned enterprises (SOEs) by local governments, in the form of allocated generation quotas, demonstrates the political challenge for market reform. The allocated generation quota protects small coal-fired and natural gas generators owned by local SOEs, lessening their motivation to improve generation efficiency, even after the reform. As a result, nearly half of...

SMS Surveys of Selected Expenditures

Mon, 9 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

High-frequency measures of economic well-being can allow policymakers and researchers to understand and quickly respond to dynamic problems, but collecting such data is expensive. Can short message service (SMS) surveys enable researchers and policymakers to measure household welfare and firm performance at a high frequency in low-income countries? We detail the implementation of two SMS surveys and evaluate their efficacy for gathering high-frequency data. One measures consumption expenditures in Rwanda and the other measures microenterprise revenues in Uganda. We successfully calculate a measure of household welfare for households that respond to the SMS survey in Rwanda and track changes in revenues over time for microenterprises in Uganda. Our SMS surveys are substantially less costly than equivalent in-person surveys; however, nonresponse is a significant problem. We propose combining SMS surveys with in-person data collection to compute weights that correct for nonresponse...

Preferences for Sustainability and Supply Chain Essential Worker Conditions: Survey Evidence during COVID-19

Wed, 5 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Preferences for Sustainability and Supply Chain Essential Worker Conditions: Survey Evidence during COVID-19

Generic Aversion and Observational Learning in the Over-the-Counter Drug Market

Wed, 23 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Generic Aversion and Observational Learning in the Over-the-Counter Drug Market

Reduce, Reuse, Redeem: Deposit-Refund Recycling Programs in the Presence of Alternatives

Tue, 22 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We estimate consumer preferences and willingness to pay for current beverage container recycling methods, including curbside pick-up services, drop-off at government-subsidized recycling centers, and drop-off at non-subsidized centers. Using a representative online and telephone survey of California households, we estimate a discrete choice model that identifies the key attributes explaining consumers’ beverage container disposal decisions: the refund amount (paid to consumers only if they recycle at drop-off centers), the volume of recyclable material generated by the household, and the effort associated with bringing recyclable materials to recycling centers. Additionally, we use counterfactual policy analy- sis to show that increasing the refund amount increases overall recycling rates, with the largest changes in consumer surplus accruing to inframarginal consumers, who are on the boundary between taking containers to recycling centers and recycling using curbside pick-up,...

Inferring informal risk-sharing regimes: Evidence from rural Tanzania

Wed, 19 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This paper studies informal risk-sharing regimes in a unified framework by examining intertemporal consumption behavior of rural households in Tanzania. We exploit a theoretically-consistent link between interest rates and cross-sectional consumption moments to test alternative risk-sharing models without requiring data on interest rates or assuming a restriction to eliminate the need for such data, which are often unavailable in developing economies. We specify tests that allow us to distinguish among models even with temporal dependence in income shocks. Our analysis shows that the consumption pattern in rural Tanzania is consistent with the self-insurance regime, and that risk aversion varies substantially across districts. Imposing a strict condition on interest rates, as often done in prior literature, misses their intertemporal heterogeneity and biases the estimation of risk aversion.

Should Consumption Sub-Aggregates be Used to Measure Poverty?

Tue, 9 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Should Consumption Sub-Aggregates be Used to Measure Poverty?

The Environmental Bias of Trade Policy

Sat, 2 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This paper documents a new fact, then analyzes its causes and consequences: in most countries, import tariffs and non-tariff barriers are substantially lower on dirty than on clean industries, where an industry’s “dirtiness” is defined as its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per dollar of output. This difference in trade policy creates a global implicit subsidy to CO2 emissions in internationally traded goods and so contributes to climate change. This global implicit subsidy to CO2 emissions totals several hundred billion dollars annually. The greater protection of downstream industries, which are relatively clean, substantially accounts for this pattern. The downstream pattern can be explained by theories where industries lobby for low tariffs on their inputs but final consumers are poorly organized. A quantitative general equilibrium model suggests that if countries applied similar trade policies to clean and dirty goods, global CO2 emissions would decrease and global real income...

Are We #StayingHome to Flatten the Curve?

Mon, 13 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The recent spread of COVID-19 across the U.S. led to concerted efforts by states to ``flatten the curve" through the adoption of stay-at-home mandates that encourage individuals to reduce travel and maintain social distance. Combining data on changes in travel activity with COVID-19 health outcomes and state policy adoption timing, we characterize nationwide changes in mobility patterns and isolate the portion attributable to statewide mandates. We find evidence of dramatic nationwide declines in mobility prior to adoption of any statewide mandates. Once states adopt a mandate, we estimate further mandate-induced declines between 2.1 and 7.0 percentage points across methods that account for states' differences in travel behavior prior to policy adoption. In addition, we investigate the effects of stay-at-home mandates on changes in COVID-19 health outcomes while controlling for pre-trends and observed pre-treatment mobility patterns. We estimate mandate-induced declines between...

How Large Are Double Markups?By

Mon, 13 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

How Large Are Double Markups?By

Estimating Household Welfare from Disaggregate Expenditures

Fri, 31 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Estimating Household Welfare from Disaggregate Expenditures

Energy Cost Pass-Through in U.S. Manufacturing: Estimates and Implications for Carbon Taxes

Wed, 8 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Energy Cost Pass-Through in U.S. Manufacturing: Estimates and Implications for Carbon Taxes

US Water Pollution Regulation over the Last Half Century: Burning Waters to Crystal Springs?

Wed, 8 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In the half century since the founding of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, public and private U.S. sources have spent nearly $5 trillion ($2017) to provide clean rivers, lakes, and drinking water, or annual spending of 0.8 percent of U.S. GDP in most years. Yet over half of rivers and substantial shares of drinking water systems violate standards, and polls for decades have listed water pollution as Americans’ number one environmental concern. We assess the history, effectiveness, and efficiency of the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act, and obtain four main conclusions. First, water pollution has fallen since these laws, in part due to their interventions. Second, investments made under these laws could be more cost-effective. Third, most recent studies estimate benefits of cleaning up pollution in rivers and lakes which are less than their costs, though these studies may under-count several potentially important types of benefits. Analysis finds more positive...

Reduced Form Evidence on Belief Updating Under Asymmetric Information

Wed, 8 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Reduced Form Evidence on Belief Updating Under Asymmetric Information

Structural experimentation to distinguish between models of risk sharing with frictions in rural Paraguay

Thu, 16 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Structural experimentation to distinguish between models of risk sharing with frictions in rural Paraguay

The potential for renewable fuels under greenhouse gas pricing: The case of sugarcane in Brazil

Mon, 13 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

We develop a supply model for ethanol production in Brazil with spatially disaggregated potential yield, freight costs, and pasture land available for conversion. We show that, under the assumptions of free capital markets, constant prices, and a modest increase over the current oil-equivalent price, a non-trivial amount of future global liquid fossil fuel can be profitably displaced by Brazilian ethanol production using existing pasture land. Along with policies to encourage the intensification of existing beef production, the dominant current land use, this new production can occur without the use of additional agricultural land, assuaging concerns about indirect land use change. At the current ethanol price, which includes the subsidizing eect of the mandate, the model predicts a substantial expansion of sugarcane ethanol, indicating that real-world considerations, such as capital controls and institutional, policy, and price...

Consumer and Strategic Firm Response to Nutrition Shelf Labels

Tue, 22 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Consumer and Strategic Firm Response to Nutrition Shelf Labels

Commodity Trade Matters

Wed, 14 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Commodity Trade Matters

The Low but Uncertain Measured Benefits of US Water Quality Policy

Wed, 14 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

U.S. investment to decrease pollution in rivers, lakes, and other surface waters has exceeded $1.9 trillion since 1960, and has also exceeded the cost of most other U.S. environmental initiatives. These investments come both from the 1972 Clean Water Act and the largely voluntary efforts to control pollution from agriculture and urban runoff. This paper reviews the methods and conclusions of about 20 recent evaluations of these policies. Surprisingly, most analyses estimate that these policies’ benefits are much smaller than their costs; the benefit/cost ratio from the median study is 0.37. Yet existing evidence is limited and undercounts many types of benefits. We conclude that it is unclear whether many of these regulations truly fail a benefit/cost test or whether existing evidence understates their net benefits; we also describe specific questions that when answered would help eliminate this uncertainty.

Per Capita Income, Consumption Patterns, and CO2 Emissions

Wed, 14 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Per Capita Income, Consumption Patterns, and CO2 Emissions

Micro-Climate Engineering for Climate Change Adaptation in Agriculture

Tue, 13 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Can farmers adapt to climate change by altering weather conditions on their fields? We define the concept of ``Micro-Climate Engineering'' (MCE), where farmers change the effective temperatures on their crops by means of shading or heating, and document such implementation by California pistachio growers. With rising winter temperatures and declining winter chill portions, pistachio growers in California could face adverse climatic conditions within 20 years. Treating dormant trees with a chemical mix, acting as a shading technology, has shown to increase winter chill count to acceptable levels. Modeling a market with heterogeneous sub-climates, we run simulations to estimate potential gains from MCE in the year 2030 for California pistachio. Our results show an expected yearly welfare gain ranging between $1-4 billion. While positive in total, profits gains are highly heterogeneous given the differences in baseline climates. Market power drives gains up, pointing to a less explored...

The Role of Political Ideology, Lobbying and Electoral Incentives in Decentralized U.S. State Support of the Environment

Fri, 1 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The Role of Political Ideology, Lobbying and Electoral Incentives in Decentralized U.S. State Support of the Environment

Asset prices and climate policy

Thu, 31 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Currently living people might reduce carbon emissions to protect themselves, their wealth, or future generations from climate damage. An overlapping generations climate model with endogenous asset priceand investment levels disentangles these incentives. Asset markets capitalize the future e¤ects of policy, regardless of peoples concern for future generations. These markets can lead self-interested agents to undertake signicant abatement. A small climate policy that raises the price of capital increases welfare of old agents and also increases welfare of young agents with a high intertemporal elasticity of sub-stitution. Climate policy can also have subtle distributional e¤ects across the currently living generations.

Carbon taxes and climate commitment with non-constant time preference

Wed, 30 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Carbon taxes and climate commitment with non-constant time preference

Per Capita Income and the Demand for Skills

Fri, 4 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Per Capita Income and the Demand for Skills

Firm Heterogeneity in Consumption Baskets: Evidence from Home and Store Scanner Data

Fri, 4 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Firm Heterogeneity in Consumption Baskets: Evidence from Home and Store Scanner Data

Estimating a Demand System with Choke Prices

Fri, 4 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We present a new, information-theoretic approach for estimating a system of many demand equations where the unobserved reservation or choke prices vary across consumers. We illustrate this method by estimating a nonlinear, almost ideal demand system (AIDS) for four types of meat using cross-sectional data from Mexico, where most households did not buy at least one type of meat during the survey week. The system of demand curves vary across demographic groups.

A Coasian Model of International Production Chains

Fri, 4 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

A Coasian Model of International Production Chains

Structural experimentation to distinguish between models of risk sharing with frictions in rural Paraguay

Tue, 18 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Structural experimentation to distinguish between models of risk sharing with frictions in rural Paraguay

Information Recovery in Dynamic Economic Systems

Thu, 13 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Information Recovery in Dynamic Economic Systems

AN ENTROPY BASED ANALYSIS OF EUROPEAN MICRO INCOME DISTRIBUTIONS AND INEQUALITY MEASURES

Thu, 13 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

AN ENTROPY BASED ANALYSIS OF EUROPEAN MICRO INCOME DISTRIBUTIONS AND INEQUALITY MEASURES

Estimating household welfare from disaggregate expenditures

Wed, 12 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Understanding how marginal utilities of expenditure evolve over time is key to the specification, the estimation, and the testing of dynamic consumer behavior. But in existing dynamic models researchers often (perhaps implicitly) assume that Engel curves are linear. This allows one to specify marginal utilities as a function of nothing more than real expenditures, but is sharply at odds with strong empirical evidence against linearity, including Engel's Law. Here we show how one can use data on disaggregate expenditures to estimate demand systems that may feature highly non-linear Engel curves; this same estimation procedure yields summary measures of household welfare within the period which we call "neediness".

Our neediness measure is of interest in its own right, and can also be used to construct measures of inequality and poverty which match conventional measures given prevailing prices, but which also describe how inequality and poverty would be different were prices...

Asset Transfers and Household Neediness

Mon, 10 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Asset Transfers and Household Neediness

RUM, WINE, and EXPERTS

Fri, 17 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

RUM, WINE, and EXPERTS

Willingness to Pay for Low Water Footprint Food Choices During Drought

Wed, 21 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Willingness to Pay for Low Water Footprint Food Choices During Drought

MEASURING THE INEQUALITY NATURE OF EUROPEAN MICRO INCOME DATA

Wed, 21 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

MEASURING THE INEQUALITY NATURE OF EUROPEAN MICRO INCOME DATA

Soda Wars: Effect of a Soda Tax Election on Soda Purchases

Fri, 2 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Soda Wars: Effect of a Soda Tax Election on Soda Purchases

Generic aversion and observational learning in the over-the-counter drug market

Fri, 28 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Through a labeling intervention at a national retailer, we test three hypotheses for consumer aversion to generic over the counter (OTC) drugs: lack of information on the comparability of generic and brand drugs, inattention to their price differences, and uncertainty about generic quality that can be reduced with information on peer purchase rates. With a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that posted information on the purchases of other customers increases generic purchase shares significantly, while the other treatments do not. Consumers without prior generic purchases appear particularly responsive to this information. These findings have policy implications for promoting evidence-based, cost-effective choices.

Utility, Risk, and Demand for Incomplete Insurance: Lab Experiments with Guatemalan Cooperatives

Mon, 11 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

We play a series of incentivized laboratory games with risk-exposed cooperative- based coffee farmers in Guatemala to understand the demand for index-based rainfall insurance. We show that insurance demand goes up as increasingly severe risk makes insurance payouts more partial (payouts are smaller than losses), but demand is ad- versely effected by more complex risk structures in which payouts are probabilistic (it is possible that a shock occurs with no payout). We use numerical techniques to esti- mate a flexible utility function for each player and consequently can put exact dollar values on the magnitude of the behavioral response triggered by probabilistic insur- ance. Exploiting the group structure of the cooperative, we investigate the possibility of using group loss adjustment to smooth idiosyncratic risk. Our results suggest that consumers value probabilistic insurance using a prospect-style utility function that is concave both in probabilities and in income, and that...

Subsidy Policies with Learning from Stochastic Experiences

Mon, 11 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Many new products presumed to be privately beneficial to the poor have a high price elasticity of demand and ultimately zero take-up rate at market prices. This has led gov- ernments and donors to provide subsidies to increase the take-up, with the hope of reducing the subsidies once the value of the product is better known. In this study, we use data from a two-year field experiment in rural China to define the optimum subsidy scheme that can insure a given take-up for a new weather insurance product for rice producers. We estimate both reduced form causal channels and a structural model of learning from stochastic expe- rience which we use to conduct policy simulations. Results show that the optimum current subsidy necessary to achieve a desired level of take-up rate depends on both past subsidy levels and past payout rates, implying that subsidy levels should vary locally year-to-year.

Migration as a risky enterprise: A diagnostic for Bangladesh

Mon, 11 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

We provide here a diagnostic of migration of Bangladeshi workers to foreign countries. We show that migration is an important contributor to the economy of Bangladesh and to the welfare of migrants, largely male workers from poor rural households. Based on high intensity recall data, we evidence, however, that migration failures may be as high as one third of attempts at migrating, with large financial losses for households with a failed migrant. The main causes of failure appear to be abuse by fraudulent agents and financial constraints. Failed migrants tend to have lesser support from community migrant networks and to be from more rural environments. Providing assistance to candidates to migration could thus be a major welfare enhancing initiative.

Quantitative Evaluation of the Social Fund for Development Labor Intensive Works Program (LIWP)

Mon, 11 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Quantitative Evaluation of the Social Fund for Development Labor Intensive Works Program (LIWP)

Product Market Reforms and Technology Adoption by Senegalese Onion Producers

Sun, 10 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

We empirically assess the responsiveness of Senegalese onion producers to significant changes in product market conditions, whereby onions are sold no longer based on volume but on weight and with labeling certifying quality. A village-level randomized information campaign on the upcoming introduction of these market reforms induced significant increase by farmers in the use of quality-enhancing inputs. Delays in the effective introduction of scales enabled us to show positive price returns from these quality- enhancing investments. These results point to the importance of improvements in the functioning of product markets to trigger technology adoption by farmers. Introduction of scales and labels was, however, not sustained as it challenged the market power of wholesale intermediaries. For these reforms to be sustainable, effective market regulation would be necessary.

Measuring Consumer Responses to a Bottled Water Tax Policy

Thu, 11 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Measuring Consumer Responses to a Bottled Water Tax Policy

Incentivizing Pro-social Behavior in Governance: The Effects of Revealing Peer Rankings on Voluntary Service

Mon, 8 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Incentivizing Pro-social Behavior in Governance: The Effects of Revealing Peer Rankings on Voluntary Service

Measuring Willingness to Pay for Environmental Attributes in Seafood

Mon, 8 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Measuring Willingness to Pay for Environmental Attributes in Seafood

Empirical Evidence on the Role of Non Linear Wholesale Pricing and Vertical Restraints on Cost Pass-Through