This paper investigates the effect of firm size and ownership structure on technology adoption decisions, using data on the electric utility industry. We argue that traditional models of technology diffusion are subject to sample selectivity biases that may overstate the effect of firm size on...

The safety of the commercial airline industry has attracted considerable public attention and debate since economic deregulation of the industry in 1978. These concerns have energized economic research on three aspects of airline safety. First, has the level of airline safety declined since...

The airline industry's current financial crisis has raised concerns over the ramifications of airline bankruptcies for air service and the economy. Such bankruptcies, however, nearly always occur when demand is weak, and, thus, when even healthy airlines are inclined to reduce flights. Moreover,...

The behavior of firms in financial distress has attracted considerable academic and policy interest in recent years. The turmoil in the U.S. airline industry has triggered much of the public policy discussion, as some observers have argued that airlines in financial distress, particularly those...

While neoclassical models assume static cost-minimization by firms, agency models suggest that firms may not minimize costs in less-competitive or regulated environments. We test this using a transition from cost-of-service regulation to market-oriented environments for many U.S. electric...

This study explores corporate responses to 1993 legislation, implemented as section 162(m) of the Internal Revenue Code, that capped the corporate tax deductibility of top management compensation at $1 million per executive unless it qualified as substantially performance-based.' We detail the...

Encouraged by the declining cost of grid-scale renewables, recent analyses conclude that the United States could reach net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 at relatively low cost using currently available technologies. While the cost of renewable generation has declined dramatically,...

We offer recommendations for how the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission can update the Horizontal Merger Guidelines ("HMGs") to strengthen merger enforcement. We focus our recommendations on three main areas. First, we suggest several ways that the HMGs can strengthen the...

Economists widely agree that, absent sufficient efficiencies or other offsetting factors, mergers that increase concentration substantially are likely to be anticompetitive. Further, holding everything else equal, the magnitude of anticompetitive effects tends to be larger, the larger is the...

This papers analyzes dispersion in the prices that an airline charges to different customers on the same route. Such variation in airlines fares is substantial: the expected absolute difference in fares between two of an airline's passengers on a route averages thirty-six percent of the...