The COVID-19 pandemic as well as the Russian invasion of Ukraine have had profound effects on the global energy landscape, with some of the longer-lasting effects still unfolding. This paper discusses how these events have reshaped the supply side of the global oil market by focusing on...

We examine the effect of air quality regulation on the productivity of some of the most heavily regulated manufacturing plants in the United States, the oil refineries of the Los Angeles (South Coast) Air Basin. We use direct measures of local air pollution regulation in this region to estimate...

The advent of hydraulic fracturing lead to a dramatic increase in US oil production. Due to regulatory, shipping and processing constraints, this sudden surge in domestic drilling caused an unprecedented divergence in crude acquisition costs across US refineries. We take advantage of this...

This paper examines the effect of energy production on newborn health using a recent strike that affected oil refineries in France as a natural experiment. First, we show that the temporary reduction in refining lead to a significant reduction in sulfur dioxide (SO2) concentrations. Second, this...

We conduct a comprehensive analysis of unspanned stochastic volatility in commodity markets in general and the crude-oil market in particular. We present model-free results that strongly suggest the presence of unspanned stochastic volatility in the crude-oil market. We then develop a tractable...

Some natural resources -- oil and minerals in particular -- exert a negative and nonlinear impact on growth via their deleterious impact on institutional quality. We show this result to be very robust. The Nigerian experience provides telling confirmation of this aspect of natural resources....

The existence of a natural resource curse has been a longstanding theme in the economic literature and in policy discussions. We propose an alternative mechanism and study its policy implications. The mechanism is based on the interaction between two building blocks: specialization in...