Firms and governments often use moral suasion and economic incentives to influence intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for various economic activities. To investigate the persistence of such interventions, we randomly assigned households to moral suasion and dynamic pricing that stimulate energy...

This paper evaluates changes in fuel procurement practices by coal- and gas-fired power plants in the United States following state-level legislation that ended cost-of-service regulation of electricity generation. I find that deregulated plants substantially reduce the price paid for coal (but...

The United States consumed more petroleum-based liquid fuel per capita than any other OECD-high-income country - 30 percent more than the second-highest country (Canada) and 40 percent more than the third-highest (Luxemburg). This paper examines the main channels through which reductions in U.S....

Recent estimates in standard models of wage determination for both unionization and occupational licensing have shown wage effects that are similar across the two institutions. These cross-sectional estimates use specialized data sets, with small sample sizes, for the period 2006 through 2008....

Many countries use substantial public funds to subsidize reductions in negative externalities. However, such subsidies create asymmetric incentives because increases in externalities remain unpriced. This paper examines implications of such asymmetric subsidy incentives by using a regression...

Nonlinear pricing and taxation complicate economic decisions by creating multiple marginal prices for the same good. This paper provides a framework to uncover consumers' perceived price of nonlinear price schedules. I exploit price variation at spatial discontinuities in electricity service...

The incidence of taxes on consumers and producers plays a central role in evaluating energy tax policy, yet the literature testing the main predictions of the tax incidence model is sparse. In this paper, we examine the pass-through rate of state gasoline and diesel taxes to retail prices, and...

The 2009 Cash for Clunkers program aimed to stimulate consumer spending in the new automobile industry, which was experiencing disproportionate reductions in demand and employment during the Great Recession. Exploiting program eligibility criteria in a regression discontinuity design, we show...

We assess the long-run dynamic implications of market-based regulation of carbon dioxide emissions in the US Portland cement industry. We consider several alternative policy designs, including mechanisms that use production subsidies to partially offset compliance costs and border tax...

The economic costs of environmental regulations have been widely debated since the U.S. began to restrict pollution emissions more than four decades ago. Using detailed production data from nearly 1.2 million plant observations drawn from the 1972-1993 Annual Survey of Manufactures, we estimate...