We study the role of distance and time in statistically explaining price dispersion for 14 commodities from 1732 to 1860. The prices are reported for US cities and Swedish market towns, so we can compare international and intranational dispersion. Distance and commodity-specific fixed effects...

We study the dynamics of price indices for major U.S. cities using panel econometric methods and find that relative price levels among cities mean revert at an exceptionally slow rate. In a panel of 19 cities from 1918 to 1995, we estimate the half-life of convergence to be approximately nine...

This paper reports an empirical test of a price dispersion equation, using data on the U.S. after World War II. The equation, derived elsewhere from aversion of the partial information-localized market models, relates price dispersion to the magnitude of changes in the aggregate disturbances. In...

Informational nudges to encourage energy conservation or load shifting have been tried in various contexts. This paper studies a program run by a small municipally owned electric utility to reduce demand on certain peak demand days. An email alert is sent out to residential customers who sign up...

In this paper, we quantify the difference between public and private prices of residential electricity immediately before and after major federal reforms in the 1930s and 1940s. Previous research found that public prices were lower in a sample of large, urban markets. Based on new data covering...

This paper evaluates changes in fuel procurement practices by coal- and gas-fired power plants in the United States following state-level legislation that ended cost-of-service regulation of electricity generation. I find that deregulated plants substantially reduce the price paid for coal (but...

Government subsidies have driven rapid growth in U.S. wind and solar generation. Using data on hourly outputs and prices for 25 wind and nine solar generating plants, some results of those subsidies are studied in detail: the value of these plants' outputs, the variability of output at plant and...

We develop a large customer-level database to study electricity pricing to U.S. manufacturing plants from 1963 to 2000. We document tremendous dispersion in price per kWh, trace that dispersion to quantity discounts and spatial differentials, estimate the role of cost factors in quantity...

Electricity tariffs typically charge residential users a volumetric rate that covers the bulk of energy, transmission, and distribution costs. The resulting prices, charged per unit of electricity consumed, do not reflect marginal costs and vary little across time and space. The emergence of...

Groundwater is a key resource for agricultural production globally. Increasingly rapid aquifer drawdowns--as well as the policies intended to increase their sustainability--increase costs to agricultural producers, with unknown consequences. This paper provides the first large-scale empirical...