This paper estimates fossil fuel subsidies and the economic and environmental benefits from reforming them, focusing mostly on a broad notion of subsidies arising when consumer prices are below supply costs plus environmental costs and general consumption taxes. Subsidies are $4.9 trillion...

This paper describes a model, implemented in an Excel spreadsheet, for evaluating a wide range of fiscal and regulatory instruments policymakers might consider for implementing their Paris mitigation pledges. Policies are evaluated against a range of metrics, including impacts on carbon dioxide...

This paper calculates, for the top twenty emitting countries, how much pricing of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is in their own national interests due to domestic co-benefits. On average, nationally efficient prices are substantial, $ 57.5 per ton of CO2 (for year 2010), reflecting primarily...

Many governments have banned strikes in public transportation. Whether this can be justified depends on whether strikes endanger public safety or health. We use time-series and cross-sectional variation in powerful registry data to quantify the effects of public transit strikes on urban...

I estimate the level of emissions cost pass-through to hourly wholesale electricity prices in Germany, based on spot market data. I control for contemporaneous shocks to demand and supply by constructing a detailed supply curve for fossil generation, and intersecting it with residual demand for...

The efficiency effects of carbon pricing depend on how it impacts distortions in fossil fuel markets, most notably from local air pollution externalities. By offsetting these distortions, carbon pricing may generate significant net economic benefits, so it is in countries own interests to...

This paper first reviews the conceptual case for, and appropriate design of, fiscal policies to address major externalities associated with energy use-global warming, local air pollution, and various side effects (e.g., congestion) from motor vehicles. Techniques for (roughly) estimating the...

We study how ambient lead exposure impacts learning in elementary school by leveraging a natural experiment where a large national automotive racing organization switched from leaded to unleaded fuel. We find increased levels and duration of exposure to lead negatively affect academic...

Creativity is often highly concentrated in time and space, and across different domains. What explains the formation and decay of clusters of creativity? We match data on notable individuals born in Europe between the XIth and the XIXth century with historical city data. The production and...

We study the impact of short-term exposure to ambient air pollution on the spread and severity of COVID-19 in Germany. We combine data on county-by-day level on confirmed cases and deaths with information on local air quality and weather conditions and exploit short-term variation in the...