Research Summary

My research interests lie at the intersection of empirical industrial organization, environmental economics, and public policy. Much of my work involves positive, and some normative, analysis of policy interventions designed to reduce the environmental impacts of energy production and consumption. I am particularly interested in understanding how market-based environmental regulations are working in practice.

Much of my work on the electricity sector has emphasized interactions between electricity markets and emissions permit markets. Emissions trading programs significantly affect electricity market outcomes through their effects on firms' production and investment incentives. Conversely, structural features of the electricity sector can affect permit market performance. In past work I have investigated how regulation in the electricity sector firms’ choice of how to comply with a large, regional emissions trading program (the NOx Budget Program). Current projects explore how variation in permit allocation rules influences the short run electricity production decisions, and the extent to which exposure-based permit trading might welfare dominate emissions-based trading in the case of a non-uniformly mixed pollutant (joint with Nick Muller).

An important part of my research agenda involves empirically testing the theoretical underpinnings of environmental regulation. This work includes an assessment of whether a necessary condition for efficient coordination of environmental regulation is being met (with Chris Knittel and Catherine Wolfram), testing for an effect of initial emissions permit allocations on firms’ emissions decisions in equilibrium(with Jeffrey Perloff), and an  investigation of whether emissions reductions achieved under market based regulation exceed what would have been achieved under more traditional, more prescriptive regulatory regimes in California (with Stephen Holland and Erin Mansur)

Finally, my climate change related research addresses a host of issues pertaining to policy design and implementation. A recent paper examines the potential for emissions leakage in regional programs that regulated the greenhouse gas emissions of only a subset of the sources contributing to the global climate change problem. A new project, joint with Stephen Ryan and Mar Reguant-Rido, examines how examines how the dynamic evolution of the domestic cement industry would be affected under alternative climate policy scenarios and designs. A more interdisciplinary project, joint with Duncan Callaway, uses mesoscale climate model data to illustrate how the environmental and economic impacts of new wind power developments can differ significantly across sites.