This article proposes and evaluates four hypotheses about US pollution and environmental policy over the last half century. First, air and water pollution have declined substantially, although greenhouse gas emissions have not. Second, environmental policy explains a large share of these trends....

This paper documents a new fact, then analyzes its causes and consequences: in most countries, import tariffs and non-tariff barriers are substantially lower on dirty than on clean industries, where an industry's "dirtiness" is defined as its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per dollar of output....

How should international economic policy address climate change? Does trade cause deforestation and endangered species depletion? How does globalization affect air and water pollution? Do trade and investment create a race to the bottom in environmental policy? How important are environmental...

This paper builds on Barreca et al.'s (2013) finding that over the course of the 20th century the proliferation of residential air conditioning led to a remarkable decline in mortality due to extreme temperature days in the United States. Using panel data on monthly mortality rates of U.S....

This article proposes and evaluates four hypotheses about US pollution and environmental policy over the last half century. First, air and water pollution have declined substantially, although greenhouse gas emissions have not. Second, environmental policy explains a large share of these trends....

A critical part of adapting to the higher temperatures that climate change brings will be the deployment of existing technologies to new sectors and regions. This paper examines the evolution of the temperature-mortality relationship over the course of the entire 20th century in the United...