What is the impact and value of hurricane forecasts? We study this question using newly-collected forecast data for major US hurricanes since 2005. We find higher wind speed forecasts increase pre-landfall protective spending, but erroneous under-forecasts increase post-landfall damage and...

Integrated assessment models (IAMs) are economists' primary tool for analyzing the optimal carbon tax. Damage functions, which link temperature to economic impacts, have come under fire because of their assumptions that may be incorrect in significant, but a priori unknowable ways. Here I...

Efficient pollution regulation equalizes marginal abatement costs across sources. We study a new flaring regulation in North Dakota and document its efficiency. The regulation reduced flaring 4 to 17 percentage points, accounting for most of the observed flaring reductions at new wells in the...

Efficient pollution regulation equalizes marginal abatement costs across sources. Here we study a new flaring regulation in North Dakota's oil and gas industry and document its efficiency. Exploiting detailed well-level data, we find that the regulation reduced flaring 4 to 7 percentage points...

Renewable portfolio standards (RPSs) are state level policies that require in-state electricity providers to procure a minimum percentage of electricity sales from renewable sources. Using theoretical and empirical models, we show how RPSs induce out-of-state emissions reductions through...