Blackouts impose substantial economic costs in developing countries. This paper advances a new explanation for their continued prevalence: unlike in high-income countries, where regulatory mandates require utilities to satisfy all electricity demand, utilities in developing countries respond to...

Since the 1970s, high volumetric (per kilowatt-hour) electricity prices have been justified in many policy discussions as encouraging more efficient use of electricity and placing more of the cost burden on those who are less prudent in their use. The argument has been used in support of...

Recovery of causal relationships in data is an essential part of scholarly inquiry in the social sciences. This chapter discusses strategies that have been successfully used in urban and regional economics for recovering such causal relationships. Essential to any successful empirical inquiry is...

We introduce a new methodology to detect and measure economic activity using geospatial data and apply it to steel production, a major industrial pollution source worldwide. Combining plant output data with geospatial data, such as ambient air pollutants, nighttime lights, and temperature, we...

In applied historical research, geographic units often differ in level of aggregation across datasets. One solution is to use crosswalks that associate factors located within one geographic unit to another, based on their relative areas. We develop an alternative approach based on relative...

We examine the effect of in-state and out-of-state renewable energy policies on wind energy patenting. Using a semiparametric fixed-effects Tobit model, we regress patent counts on a series of policy variables within a state and a spatially weighted average for each of these policies implemented...

We use restricted-access, geocoded data on the near-universe of workers in 23 U.S. states in order to quantify the impact of wind energy development on local earnings and employment, by race, ethnicity, sex, and educational attainment. We find the largest relative impacts for workers without a...

Coal mined on federally managed lands accounts for approximately 40% of U.S. coal consumption and 13% of total U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions. The U.S. Department of the Interior is undertaking a programmatic review of federal coal leasing, including the climate effects of burning federal...

Energy security is the ability of households, businesses, and government to accommodate disruptions in supply in energy markets. This survey considers the economic dimensions of energy security, political and other non-economic security concerns and discusses policy approaches that could enhance...

From 1864 to 1972, the real price of oil fell by, on average, over one percent per year. This trend dramatically broke when prices for crude increased by over 650 percent from 1972 to 1980. Policy makers adopted several policies designed to keep oil prices in check and reduce consumption....