We provide evidence on the value of patents to startups by leveraging the random assignment of applications to examiners with different propensities to grant patents. Using unique data on all first-time applications filed at the U.S. Patent Office since 2001, we find that startups that win the...

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...

This paper demonstrates how a central bank might operationalize an expanded role inclusive of managing risks from environmental pollution. The analysis introduces the green interest rate (rg) which depends on temporal changes in the pollution intensity of output. This policy instrument...

Electrification of transportation and buildings to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions requires massive switching from natural gas and refined petroleum products. All three end-use energy sources are mispriced due in part to the unpriced pollution they emit. Natural gas and electricity...

Electric vehicles are declining in cost so rapidly that they may claim a large share of the vehicle market by 2030. This paper examines a set of practical regulatory design considerations for fuel-economy standards or greenhouse gas standards in the context of highly uncertain electric vehicle...

Decarbonization and electrification will require a transformed electricity grid. Our long-run model of entry and exit of generation and storage capacity captures crucial aspects of the electricity industry such as time-varying demand for electricity, intermittency of renewables, and...

Investor concerns about climate and other environmental regulatory risks suggest that these risks should affect corporate bond risk assessment and pricing. We test this hypothesis and find that firms with poor environmental profiles or high carbon footprints tend to have lower credit ratings and...

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....

Pricing carbon emissions from a jurisdiction could harm the competitiveness of local firms, causing the leakage of emissions and economic activity to other regions. Past research concentrated on national carbon prices, but the impacts of subnational carbon prices could be more severe due to the...