One of the first actions of the Environmental Protection Agency after the declaration of the COVID-19 crisis in mid-March 2020 was to announce that it would relax its enforcement policies with respect to environmental reporting and violations during the time of the pandemic. Ostensibly this was...

Lead pollution is consistently linked to cognitive and behavioral impairments, yet little is known about the benefits of public health interventions for children exposed to lead. This paper estimates the long-term impacts of early-life interventions (e.g. lead remediation, nutritional...

We leverage the timing of coalmine accidents to examine the effect of coal mining on air pollution. Safety regulations mandate that coal mining be suspended if a mine experiences an accident with 10 or more fatalities. We use a stacked difference-in-differences approach to compare counties with...

This paper studies the effect of the West Philadelphia Promise Zone Initiative on weeklyviolent crime rates in a high-crime area of West Philadelphia, where a series of public safetyand quality of life improvement grants were dispersed from 2014 to 2019. Results using adifference-in-differences...

Although gasoline taxes are widely used (nearly) efficient CO2 emission controls, additional fuel-efficiency regulation is applied e.g. in the USA and in Europe. In a simple analytical model, we specify the welfare implications of (i) gasoline taxes, (ii) of 'gas-guzzler taxes' (iii) of...

Why do for-profit firms take voluntary steps to improve the environment? Brand appeal to green consumers or investors, the ability to influence or avoid regulation, or the experience gained for future regulation, have all been suggested as possible reasons. The empirical evidence is decidedly...

Stickstoffemissionen aus der Landwirtschaft belasten neben anderen Stickstoffquellen Gewässer und andere Umweltmedien, sowohl in Deutschland als auch in anderen Ländern der Europäischen Union und weltweit. Um Landwirte2 von Handlungsänderungen zu überzeugen, werden neben regulativen und...

Many governments subsidize regional rail service as an alternative to road traffic. This paper assesses whether increases in service frequency reduce road traffic externalities. We exploit differences in service frequency growth by procurement mode following a railway reform in Germany to...

Marine and coastal ecosystems - and thus the benefits they create for humans - are subject to increasing pressures and competing usages. For this reason, the European Union (EU) adopted the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), which is to guide future maritime policy in the EU and aims at...

Although gasoline taxes are widely used (nearly) efficient CO2 emission controls, additional fuel-efficiency regulation is applied e.g. in the USA and in Europe. In a simple analytical model, we specify the welfare implications of (i) gasoline taxes, (ii) of 'gas-guzzler taxes' (iii) of...