Technological innovations in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have enabled tremendous amounts of natural gas to be extracted profitably from underground shale formations that were long thought to be uneconomical. In this paper, we provide the first estimates of broad-scale welfare...

Output-based carbon regulations--such as fuel economy standards and the rate-based standards in the Clean Power Plan--create well-known incentives to inefficiently increase output. Similar distortions are created by attribute-based regulations. This paper demonstrates that, despite these...

We categorize the primary incentive-based mechanisms under consideration for addressing greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation—pricing carbon, setting intensity standards, and subsidizing clean energy—and compare their market outcomes under similar expansions of clean...

What are the implications of gasoline price volatility for the design of fuel economy policies? I show that this problem has a strong parallel to Weitzman's (1974) classic model of using price or quantity controls to regulate an externality. Changes in fuel prices act as shocks to the marginal...

The U.S. shale boom has profoundly increased crude oil movements by both pipelines–the traditional mode of transportation–and railroads. This paper develops a model of how pipeline investment and railroad use are determined in equilibrium, emphasizing how railroads' flexibility allows them...

We show that oil production from existing wells in Texas does not respond to price incentives. Drilling activity and costs, however, do respond strongly to prices. To explain these facts, we reformulate Hotelling's (1931) classic model of exhaustible resource extraction as a drilling problem:...

The U.S. shale boom has profoundly increased crude oil movements by both pipelines–the traditional mode of transportation–and railroads. This paper develops a model of how pipeline investment and railroad use are determined in equilibrium, emphasizing how railroads' flexibility allows them...