We evaluate the impact of the 2008 Apex Oil court decision that made the creditors of some corporations financially liable for the environmental damages caused by specific pollutants. Apex reduced the circumstances under which environmental liabilities were dischargeable in Chapter 11, which...

The welfare contributions of the digital economy, characterized by the proliferation of new and free goods, are not well-measured in our current national accounts. We derive explicit terms for the welfare contributions of these goods and introduce a new metric, GDP-B which quantifies their...

The national-income accounts double-count investment, which enters once when it occurs and again in present value as rental income on added capital. The double-counting implies over-statement of levels of GDP and national income. Across countries, those with higher propensities to invest...

The United Nations Human Development Index (HDI) is arguably the most widely used alternative to gross domestic product for measuring national development. This is in large part due to its multidimensional nature, as it incorporates not only income, but also education and health. However, the...

Measuring average differences in an outcome across racial or ethnic groups is a crucial first step for equity assessments, but researchers often lack access to data on individuals' races and ethnicities to calculate them. A common solution is to impute the missing race or ethnicity labels using...

This study examines the uneven effects of air pollution from maritime ports on physical and mental health across racial groups. We exploit quasi-random variation in vessels in port from weather events far out in the ocean to estimate how port traffic influences air pollution and human health. We...

Despite awareness of the detrimental impact of CO₂ pollution on the world climate, countries vary widely in how they design and enforce environmental laws. Using novel micro data about firms' CO₂ emissions across countries, we document that firms headquartered in countries with strict...

The U.S. Clean Air Act, passed in 1970 with strong bipartisan support, was the first environmental law to give the Federal government a serious regulatory role, established the architecture of the U.S. air pollution control system, and became a model for subsequent environmental laws in the...

We discuss emerging proposals for border tax adjustments (BTAs) to accompany commitments to reduce carbon emissions in the EU, the US and other OECD economies. The rationale offered for such border adjustment is that various entities, such as the EU, if making commitments to reduce emissions...

This chapter for the Handbook of Law and Economics provides an economic perspective of environmental law and policy. We examine the ends of environmental policy, that is, the setting of goals and targets, beginning with normative issues, notably the Kaldor-Hicks criterion and the related method...