Forestation is viewed as an important means of removing CO₂ from the atmosphere and thereby reducing net CO₂ emissions. But how much CO₂ can be removed, and at what cost? Focusing on forested and forestable areas in South America, and using spatially disaggregated data, we estimate a...

How much of the economy is focused on protecting, rehabilitating, or managing the environment? To answer this question, we develop a proof-of-concept environmental activity account to quantify the environmental goods and services sector (EGSS) in the United States. Methodologically, we employ a...

This paper proposes that strong financial, judicial, and labor market institutions provide comparative advantage in clean industries, and thereby improve a country's environmental quality. Five complementary tests support this hypothesis. First, industries that depend on institutions are...

Many US states have set ambitious renewable portfolio standards (RPS) that require utilities to switch from fossil fuels toward renewables. RPS increases the renewables capacity, bond issuance, maturity, and yield spreads of investor-owned utilities compared to municipal producers that are...

Formal rules within organizations are pervasive, but may be interpreted and implemented differently by actors within the organization, impacting organizational outcomes. We consider a delegation reform that changed formal rules within the environmental regulator in an Indian state, by giving...

Estimating the cost to society from a ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) released into the atmosphere requires connecting a model of the climate system with a representation of the economic and social effects of changes in climate, as well as the valuation and aggregation of diverse, uncertain impacts...

Economic policies often involve dynamic interventions, where individuals receive repeated interventions over multiple periods. This dynamics makes past responses informative to predict future responses and ultimate outcomes depend on the history of interventions. Despite these phenomena,...

We analyze survey data on ESG beliefs and preferences in a large panel of retail investors linked to administrative data on their investment portfolios. The survey elicits investors' expectations of long-term ESG equity returns and asks about their motivations, if any, to invest in ESG assets....

What is a feasible and efficient policy to regulate air pollution from vehicles? A Pigouvian tax is technologically infeasible. Most countries instead rely on exhaust standards that limit air pollution emissions per mile for new vehicles. We assess the effectiveness and efficiency of these...

We propose a new methodology to build portfolios that hedge the economic and financial risks from climate change. Our quantity-based approach exploits information on how mutual fund managers trade in response to idiosyncratic changes in their climate risk beliefs. We exploit two types of...