This book aids those concerned about environmental issues to firmly grasp relevant analytical methods and to comprehend the thought process behind environmental economics. It does so by drawing from specific environmental issues and at the same time providing commentary that facilitates understanding. This text contains in-depth explanations necessary for a thorough understanding of the fundamental aspects and importance of environmental economics.
The environment and economics -- Normative and positive economic analysis -- Social choice : how much environmental protection? -- Efficiency and markets -- Market failure : public goods, public bads, and externalities -- Making decisions about environmental programs -- Demand for environmental goods -- Hedonic price methods -- Household production -- Constructed markets -- Regulating pollution -- Emission prices and fees -- Property rights -- Regulation over space and time -- Regulation with unknown control costs -- Audits, enforcement, and moral hazard -- Voluntary actions and agreements -- Managing risk and uncertainty -- International and interregional competition -- Environment, growth, and development
Policy makers are increasingly choosing market-based policies over command and control options. In this dissertation, I explore two instances of policy choices in environmental economics: a relatively novel market-based approach to handle congestion in transportation policy; and, government provision and control in the arena of water policy.The first chapter estimates the traffic volume and travel time effects of the recently implemented road congestion pricing on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. I employ both a difference-in-differences and regression discontinuity approach to analyze previously unexploited data for the two years spanning the price change and obtain causal estimates of the hourly average treatment effects of the policy. I find evidence of peak spreading in traffic volume and significant decreases in travel time during peak hours. I also find suggestive evidence of substitution to a nearby bridge that is not subject to congestion pricing. In addition, I show significant decreases in travel time variability. Using my results, I calculate own- and cross-price elasticities for trips due to the toll change and include back-of-the-envelope calculations for the welfare effects of the policy.The second chapter I explore the impact of government water delivers in California's Central Valley. California's agricultural sector receives large quantities of irrigation water from the federal and state water projects. In recent years, there have been significant restrictions on these deliveries due to droughts and regulation to protect endangered species. This chapter empirically tests the hypothesis that higher deliveries to water districts in a given county lead to higher agricultural employment and cropped area and provides point estimates of this effect and uncertainty around the estimates. The results show robust evidence of a statistically and economically significant impact of irrigation water deliveries on employment and area. This effect is robust to different definitions of employment, alternate control groups, and different windows of data.
This dissertation contains three essays exploring how economic agents and markets respond to weather events and natural disasters.Chapter 1 examines whether short-run weather fluctuations affect the decision to go solar by residential customers in California. The results show that residential customers whose sign-ups are followed by less sunny weather are more likely to cancel their contracts. This behavior is inconsistent with rationality, as a solar PV system is a long-term investment whose return is not affected by short-run weather fluctuations. I analyze this behavior further using a theoretical model of projection bias combined with engineering models of solar power production and energy demand. Chapter 2 studies housing market responses to hurricanes using detailed data on Florida housing markets during 2000-2016. We identify the causal effects of hurricanes in a difference-in-differences framework exploiting the exogeneity of hurricane path and timing. The results show that the housing market is dominated by a negative supply shock lasting up to three years. While these effects are transitory, we show that they are associated with the arrival of home buyers whose income is higher, holding fixed the quality of homes transacted. This implies a lasting shift in the local economic profile towards higher income, along with potential gentrification.Chapter 3 investigates whether and how voters' preferences on environmental policy are reflected in legislative elections. People's belief in climate change is known to be affected by experiencing extreme weather events. We study the electoral responses to these randomly occurring events in House of Representative elections. To focus on the channel of environmental preference, we estimate differential responses based on the environmental ideology of the incumbent congressperson conditional on party membership. We find evidence that climate-related extreme weather events motivate political giving to challengers of anti-environment incumbents, increase the overall competitiveness in these races, and lead to a lower probability of re-election for these incumbents.
