The phasedown of coal for electricity generation is considered vital to meeting global climate targets. Many countries have pledged to stop using coal, with some as early as 2030. While the United States has no target currently in place, several states do. In this paper, we examine the...

This paper asserts that reporting of the ratio of welfare gains to tax revenue should be standard protocol in economic analyses of externality correcting taxes. That this comparison might matter is somewhat of a "blind spot" in most economic analyses, for it plays virtually no role when...

This chapter examines the tradeoffs of regulating upstream (e.g., coal, natural gas, and refined petroleum product producers) versus regulating downstream (e.g., direct sources of greenhouse gases (GHG)). In general, regulating at the source provides polluters with incentives to choose among...

Electricity restructuring has created the opportunity for producers to exercise market power. Oligopolists increase price by distorting output decisions, causing cross-firm production inefficiencies. This study estimates the environmental implications of production inefficiencies attributed to...

In a market subject to environmental regulation, a firm's strategic behavior affects the production and emissions decisions of all firms. If firms are regulated by a Pigouvian tax, changing emissions will not affect the marginal cost of polluting. However, under a tradable permits system, the...

Restructuring electricity markets has enabled wholesalers to exercise market power. Using a common method of measuring competitive behavior in these markets, several studies have found substantial inefficiencies. This method overstates actual welfare loss by ignoring production constraints that...

Investments in the US Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine and Innovation (STEMI) enterprise come from many different sectors and their combined effect crucially enhances the nation's competitiveness. Philanthropy is an under-appreciated component of this ecosystem, providing $21.5 billion...

Successful innovation is essential for the survival and growth of organizations but how best to incentivize innovation is poorly understood. We compare how two common incentive schemes affect innovative performance in a field experiment run in partnership with a large life sciences company. We...

In this paper, we examine the impact of pay-for-performance incentives on learning-by-doing. We exploit personnel data on fruit pickers paid under two distinct compensation contracts: a standard piece rate plan and a piece rate plan with an extra one-time bonus tied to output. Under the bonus...

The practice of burning agricultural waste is ubiquitous around the world, yet the external human capital costs from those fires have been underexplored. Using data from the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE) and agricultural fires detected by high-resolution satellites in China during...