Shale gas has grown to become a major new source of energy in countries around the globe. While its importance for energy supply is well recognized, there has also been public concern over potential risks such as damage to buildings and contamination of water supplies caused by geological...

This paper investigates the reversibility of the effects of transport infrastructure investments, based on a programme that removed much of the rail network in Britain during the mid-20th Century. We find that a 10% loss in rail access between 1950 and 1980 caused a persistent 3% decline in...

This paper estimates the value of urban trees. The empirical strategy exploits an ecological catastrophe -- the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) infestation in Toronto to isolate exogenous variation in neighborhood tree canopy changes. Adding one tree to a postcode increases property prices by 0.40%; the...

We provide the first estimates of the negative impact of exposure to extremely high temperatures during pregnancy on mothers' labor market outcomes. We employ individual-level survey data from China and leverage plausibly exogenous fluctuations in heat exposure within cities. The results...

In many industries firms can learn about new technologies from other adopters; mandatory disclosure regulations represent an understudied channel for this type of social learning. We study an environmentally-focused law in the shale gas industry to examine firms' claims that disclosure...

Local pollution exposures disproportionately impact minority households, but the root causes remain unclear. This study conducts a correspondence experiment on a major online housing platform to test whether housing discrimination constrains minority access to housing options in markets with...

Using the mass closure of development zones in 2004 as a natural experiment, we examine the causal effect of development zones on firm level TFP in China. The difference-in-difference estimator shows that on average, loss of development zone policies results in 6.5% loss of firms' TFP....

In this paper, we study the role of information in non-market valuation. We develop a variant of the Rosen-Roback model of inter-urban sorting that incorporates public access to information about air quality, and demonstrate that information constraints create a wedge between the revealed and...

Using a unique combination of datasets and estimation techniques, we test whether private lease negotiations to extract oil and natural gas exhibit features of Coasian efficiency. We demonstrate that measures of wealth (including income, house square footage, and land acreage), typically...

We analyze mortgage lenders' behavior with respect to shale gas risk during the period of the U.S. shale gas boom, which coincided with fluctuations in the U.S. housing market and increased scrutiny in the lending industry. Shale gas operations have the potential to place affected houses into...