Regulatory oversight of toxic emissions from industrial plants and understanding about these emissions' impacts are in their infancy. Applying a research design based on the openings and closings of 1,600 industrial plants to rich data on housing markets and infant health, we find that: toxic...

This paper assesses the impact of pollution on worker productivity by relating exogenous daily variations in ozone with productivity of agricultural workers as recorded under piece rate contracts. We find robust evidence that ozone levels well below federal air quality standards have a...

When regulated firms are offered compensation to prevent them from relocating, efficiency requires that payments be distributed across firms so as to equalize marginal relocation probabilities, weighted by the damage caused by relocation. We formalize this fundamental economic logic and apply it...

Using the most comprehensive developing country dataset ever compiled on air and water pollution and environmental regulations, the paper assesses India's environmental regulations with a difference-in-differences design. The air pollution regulations are associated with substantial improvements...

Charles Tiebout's suggestion that people "vote with their feet" for communities with optimal bundles of taxes and public goods has played a central role in local public finance for over 50 years. Using a locational equilibrium model, we derive formal tests of his premise. The model predicts...

A well-known theorem by Herfindahl states that the low-cost nonrenewable resource must be exploited first. Consider resources that are differentiated only by their pollution content. For instance, both coal and natural gas are used to generate electricity, yet coal is more polluting. We show...

This paper analyzes an emissions trading program that was introduced to reduce smog-causing pollution from large stationary sources. Using variation in state level electricity industry restructuring activity, I identify the effect of economic regulation on pollution permit market outcomes. There...