Prior research demonstrates that mortality rates increase during economic booms and decrease during economic busts, but little analysis has been conducted investigating the role of environmental risks as potential mechanisms for this relationship. We investigate the contribution of air pollution...

Government policies that are not intended to address environmental concerns can nonetheless distort prices and affect firms' emissions. We present an analytical general equilibrium model to study the effect of distortionary subsidies on factor prices and on environmental outcomes. We model an...

How should environmental policy respond to economic fluctuations caused by persistent productivity shocks? This paper answers that question using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium real business cycle model that includes a pollution externality. I first estimate the relationship between...

This paper explores the relationship between time preferences, economic incentives, and body mass index (BMI). Using data from the 2006 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we first show that greater impatience increases BMI and the likelihood of obesity even after controlling for demographic,...

Empirical evidence suggests that individual choices often display behavioral anomalies, like time-inconsistent preferences. For example, a household's preferences at the time of purchase of energy-intensive durable goods like cars and appliances may differ from its preferences later on,...

Environmental economics has traditionally fallen in the domain of microeconomics, but recently approaches from macroeconomics have been applied to studying environmental policy. We focus on two macroeconomic tools and their application to environmental economics. First, real business cycle...

Environmental economics has traditionally fallen in the domain of microeconomics, but approaches from macroeconomics have recently been applied to studying environmental policy. We focus on two macroeconomic tools and their application to environmental economics. First, real-business-cycle...

Ambulatory Surgery Centers (ASCs) are small (typically physician owned) healthcare facilities that specialize in performing outpatient surgeries and therefore compete against hospitals for patients. Physicians who own ASCs could potentially treat their most profitable patients at their ASCs and...

This essay explores the relationship between commerce and culture in the context of the recent debate over the social effect of Wal-Mart. In spite of much public debate, little is known about how Wal-Mart affects values. Using data collected from multiple sources, we show there is little...

The origin of ideas is an important topic to be addressed by eminent disciplinary scholars, and then debated, and then debated, and then debated yet again. Even addressing the narrower topic of the origin of entrepreneurial or innovative ideas is a bold if not presumptuous undertaking. In this...