We analyze the cost-effectiveness of electric utility ratepayer-funded programs to promote demand-side management (DSM) and energy efficiency (EE) investments. We specify a model that relates electricity demand to previous EE DSM spending, energy prices, income, weather, and other demand...

Exploiting a rich data set of passenger vehicle registrations in twenty U.S. metropolitan statistical areas from 1997 to 2005, we examine the effects of gasoline prices on the automotive fleet's composition. We find that high gasoline prices affect fleet fuel economy through two channels: (1)...

The emissions reductions from the adoption of a new transportation technology depend on the emissions from the new technology relative to those from the displaced technology. We evaluate the emissions reductions from electric vehicles (EVs) by identifying which vehicles would have been purchased...

During 2013-2014, China launched a nationwide, real-time air quality monitoring and disclosure program, a watershed moment in the history of its environmental regulations. We present the first empirical analysis of this natural experiment by exploiting its staggered implementation across cities....

The U.S. public transit system represents a multi-billion dollar industry that provides essential transit services to millions of urban residents. We study the market for new transit buses that features a set of non-profit transit agencies purchasing buses primarily from a few domestic bus...

Developing and fast-growing economies have some of the worse air pollution in the world, but there is a lack of systematic evidence on the health especially morbidity impact of air pollution in these countries. Based on the universe of credit and debit card transactions in China from 2013 to...

Local governments spend roughly $1.6 trillion per year to provide a variety of public services ranging from police and fire protection to public schools and public transit. However, we know little about public sector's productivity in delivering key services. To understand the productivity both...

While China has made great strides in transforming its centrally-planned economy to a market-oriented economy, there still exist widespread interregional trade barriers, such as policies and practices that protect local firms against competition from non-local firms. This study documents the...

While there is a vast body of research on the benefits of FDI in developing countries, whether and how the form of FDI matters have received limited attention. This paper studies the impact of FDI via quid pro quo (technology for market access) on facilitating knowledge spillover and quality...

The efficiency of resource allocation is often analyzed in static frameworks with a focus on the cross-sectional heterogeneity in the willingness to pay among users. When the resource is durable in nature, the temporal heterogeneity could be important in assessing the efficiency properties of...