To make high-quality research more accessible and easier to explore.

Fields:
4 results ✕ Clear filters

The Cost of Automobile Safety and Emissions Regulation to the Consumer: Some Preliminary Results

American Economic Review 2018 open access
The cost of government regulation of the automobile has been the subject of heated controversy since its inception in the mid- 1960's. Much of this controversy has centered on the costs and benefits of individual regulations, but there has been little attention paid to the overall effect of emissions and safety regulation. In this paper, we attempt to measure the effect of these regulatory policies upon the consumer cost of owning and operating an automobile

Why Is Pollution from US Manufacturing Declining? The Roles of Environmental Regulation, Productivity, and Trade

American Economic Review 2018 108(12), 3814-3854 open access
Between 1990 and 2008, air pollution emissions from US manufacturing fell by 60 percent despite a substantial increase in manufacturing output. We show that these emissions reductions are primarily driven by within-product changes in emissions intensity rather than changes in output or in the composition of products produced. We then develop and estimate a quantitative model linking trade with the environment to better understand the economic forces driving these changes. Our estimates suggest that the implicit pollution tax that manufacturers face doubled between 1990 and 2008. These changes in environmental regulation, rather than changes in productivity and trade, account for most of the emissions reductions

Controlling Contradictions Among Regulations

American Economic Review 2018 open access
Congress pursues externalities one at a time. The resulting legislation embodies the same sequential approach, instructing regulatory agencies to set and enforce standards for a single problem. Rarely, if ever, are agencies instructed or even permitted to account for contradictions with other federal legislation and rulemaking.

Identifying Industry Margins with Price Constraints: Structural Estimation on Pharmaceuticals

American Economic Review 2018 108(12), 3685-3724
We develop a structural model to investigate the effects of pharmaceutical price regulation on demand and on manufacturers’ price-setting behavior in France. We estimate price-cost margins in a regulated market with price constraints and infer whether these constraints are binding, exploiting cost restrictions across drugs, which come from observing the same drugs in potentially price-constrained markets (France) and in markets where prices are unregulated (United States and Germany). Our counterfactual simulations suggest that price constraints generated modest savings for anti-ulcer drugs in 2003–2013 (2 percent of total expenses), relative to a free pricing scenario, and shifted consumption from generic to branded drugs