This paper studies the role of the U.S. pipeline infrastructure in the country's transition from coal to natural gas energy. I leverage the Environmental Protection Agency's Mercury and Air Toxics Standards as a plausibly exogenous intervention, which encouraged many coal plants to convert to natural gas. Combining this quasi-experimental variation with a plant's preexisting proximity to the pipeline network, I isolate implied pipeline connection costs within a dynamic discrete choice model of plant conversions. Key model results indicate that infrastructure-related costs prevent $9 billion in emissions reductions from taking place, suggesting a $2.4 million per mile external benefit of pipeline expansions.

The Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978 contains several provisions that can affect the cost of producing loans for financial intermediaries. In a competitive lending market the additional monitoring and expected foreclosure costs imposed by the change in the bankruptcy law should be passed on to the borrower. Using survey data from a sample of small business loans from commercial banks, evidence is presented that the enactment of the new law resulted in higher contract rates of interest.

John D. Leeth, Jonathan A. Scott, The Incidence of Secured Debt: Evidence from the Small Business Community, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Sep., 1989), pp. 379-394

This paper addresses two questions related to the ongoing consolidation of the US banking industry and its effect on small firm financing. First, are conventional measures of market structure (e.g. geographic market size and deposit concentration) related to bank competition for small firm financial business? Second, does an increase in bank competition produce an improvement in bank services irrespective of market structure? To answer these questions we use a survey of small firm owners that asks them to report on changes in bank competition for their business. Our findings show that reports of increased competition by small firm owners are negatively related to the level of and change in deposit concentration. In addition, we find a significant positive association between changes in bank competition reported by small firms and their reports of changes in banking outcomes (e.g. service quality) that is independent of deposit concentration, firm risk, and credit usage.