Input subsidies in natural resource sectors are widely believed to cause depletion of the natural capital on which those sectors rely. But identification and data challenges have stymied attempts to empirically estimate the causal effect of subsidies on resource extraction. China's fishing fleet...

Despite a 30-year long history, Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) remain controversial and debates continue to surround their efficacy in leading the low-carbon transition in the electricity sector. Contributing to the ongoing debates is the lack of definitive causal evidence on their impact...

This paper produces the first large-scale estimates of the US health related welfare costs due to climate change. Using the presumably random year-to-year variation in temperature and two state of the art climate models, the analysis suggests that under a "business as usual" scenario climate...

Many countries have phased out nuclear electricity production in response to concerns about nuclear waste and the risk of nuclear accidents. This paper examines the impact of the shutdown of roughly half of the nuclear production capacity in Germany after the Fukushima accident in 2011. We use...

This paper examines the application of quasi-experimental methods in environmental economics. We begin with two observations: i) standard quasi-experimental methods, first applied in other microeconomic fields, typically assume unit-level treatments that do not spill over across units; (ii)...

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented policy responses and a large literature evaluating their impacts. This paper re-examines this literature and investigates the role of researchers' degrees-of-flexibility on the estimated effects of mobility-reducing policies on social-distancing...

Does social distancing harm innovation? We estimate the effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs)--policies that restrict interactions in an attempt to slow the spread of disease--on local invention. We construct a panel of issued patents and NPIs adopted by 50 large US cities during the...

Many behavioral responses to climate change are carbon-intensive, raising concerns that adaptation may cause additional warming. The sign and magnitude of this feedback depend on how increased emissions from cooling balance against reduced emissions from heating across space and time. We present...

This paper reviews and extends the recent empirical literature on the impact of climate change on mortality and adaptation in the United States. The analysis produces several new facts. First, the reductions in the impact of extreme heat on mortality risk previously documented up to 2004 have...

This paper studies how agricultural production responds to the loss of agricultural labor during the process of urbanization and structural transformation. Using household microdata from India and exogenous variation in migration opportunities induced by urban income shocks, we show that...