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...

This paper discusses U.S. energy policy and the associated evolution of energy supply, energy demand, energy prices and the industrial organization of the domestic energy industries during the period 1991 through 2000. This period covers the last two years of the George H. W. Bush administration...

The transition of Hong Kong's main economic activities from manufacturing to services is accompanied by gradual changes in the regulatory regimes for monopolies. The local telecommunication services industry has been liberalized, deregulation of public transport is taking shape, and the schemes...

This paper examines the effects of the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency standards (CAFE) on the automobile product mix, prices and fuel consumption First a discrete choice model of automobile demand and a continuous model of vehicle use are estimated using micro data from the Consumer...

I make three points relating to the transition from fossil fuels to non-carbon energy. One is that the economic cost of moving from fossil fuels to renewable energy in electricity generation is very low, and probably lower than many estimates of the economic benefits from this change. The second...

We study a problem in which policymakers need to screen self-selected individuals by unobserved heterogeneity in social welfare gains from a policy intervention. In our framework, the marginal treatment effects and marginal treatment responses arise as key statistics to characterize social...

State-level building energy codes have been around for over 40 years, but recent empirical research has cast doubt on their effectiveness. A potential virtue of standards-based policies is that they may be less regressive than explicit taxes on energy consumption. However, this conjecture has...

Choices in energy regulation, particularly whether and how to price externalities, can have widely different distributional consequences both across and within income groups. Traditional welfare theory focuses largely on effects across income groups; such "vertical equity" concerns can typically...

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...

Our new analytical general equilibrium model is used to study effects of tightening state Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) on electricity price, CO2 emissions, fossil fuel electricity generation, and two kinds of renewable generation. We show how those outcomes depend on key state...