The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency uses a dynamic approach to environmental enforcement for air pollution, with repeat offenders subject to high fines and designation as high priority violators (HPV). We estimate the benefits of dynamic monitoring and enforcement by developing and...

Carbon control policies in OECD countries commonly differentiate emission prices in favor of energy-intensive industries. While leakage provides a efficiency argument for differential emission pricing, the latter may be a disguised beggar-thy-neighbor policy to exploit terms of trade. Using an...

We discuss global climate mitigation that builds on existing unilateral measures to cut emissions. We document and discuss the rationale for such unilateral measures argue that such measures have the potential to generate positive spillover effects both within and across countries. In a simple...

This paper describes and implements a method for estimating the average marginal value of a time-varying local public good: air quality. It uses the General Social Survey (GSS), which asks thousands of people in various U.S. locations how happy they are, along with other demographic and attitude...

For political and practical reasons, environmental regulations sometimes treat point source polluters, such as power plants, differently from mobile source polluters, such as vehicles. This paper measures the extent of this regulatory asymmetry in the case of nitrogen oxides (NOx), the criteria...

Regulators often rely on self-reported data to determine compliance. Tolerance for missingness in self-monitoring data may create incentives for local agents to strategically decide when (not) to monitor regulated activities. This paper builds a framework to detect whether local governments skip...

We examine how exogenous changes in exposure to air pollution over the past two decades have altered the disparities in home values between Black and White homeowners. We find that air quality capitalization rates are significantly lower for Black homeowners. In fact, they are so much lower...

Although at least 400 million people suffer from seasonal allergies worldwide, the adverse effects of pollen on "non-health" outcomes, such as cognition and productivity, are relatively understudied. Using ambulance archives from Japan, we demonstrate that high pollen days are associated with...

Many environmental hazards produce health effects that take years to arise, but quasi-experimental studies typically measure outcomes and treatment over short time periods. We develop a new approach to overcome this challenge and use it to gauge the effect of exposure to air pollution on US life...

Extensive research has documented that elevated air pollution increases mortality and morbidity, with estimates reaching 8 million deaths per year. Many of the world's one billion urban poor face both high ambient concentrations and even higher transient peaks. Should government interventions...