Quality certification is a common tool to reduce asymmetric information and enhance trust in marketplaces. Should the certificate focus on seller inputs such as fast shipping, or include output measures such as consumer ratings? In theory, incorporating output measures makes the certificate more...

This essay reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on quality disclosure and certification. After comparing quality disclosure with other quality assurance mechanisms and describing a brief history of quality disclosure, we address three key theoretical issues: (i) Why don't sellers...

We first summarize the dominant interpretations of the "frontier" in the United States and predecessor colonies over the past 400 years: agricultural (1610s-1880s), industrial (1890s-1930s), scientific (1940s- 1980s), and algorithmic (1990s-present). We describe the difference between the...

Regulators often rely on self-reported data to determine compliance. Tolerance for missingness in self-monitoring data may create incentives for local agents to strategically decide when (not) to monitor regulated activities. This paper builds a framework to detect whether local governments skip...

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...

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...

Political debates around environmental regulation often center around the effect of policy on jobs. Opponents decry the "job-killing" EPA and proponents point to "green jobs" as a positive policy outcome. And beyond the political debates, Congress requires the EPA to evaluate "potential losses...

Output-based carbon regulations--such as fuel economy standards and the rate-based standards in the Clean Power Plan--create well-known incentives to inefficiently increase output. Similar distortions are created by attribute-based regulations. This paper demonstrates that, despite these...