The Capitalization Effects of Water Pollution Trading: Evidence From Connecticut (Job Market Paper)
I estimate the impacts of water pollution trading on residential housing prices within a hedonic property value framework that exploits variation in trading behaviors of polluting facilities and relative home locations near them. I focus on the Connecticut Nitrogen Credit Exchange (NCE), a pollution trading program targeting waste water treatment plants that affect water quality in Long Island Sound. I find significant increases in housing prices for homes located just downstream of plants that sold pollution credits generated from surplus reductions beyond their required levels. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the program yields net benefits and outperforms a counterfactual command-and-control regulation. Lastly, the paper investigates more nuanced concerns about pollution trading, such as the formation of hotspots by reallocating pollution and corresponding distributional effects. While I estimate spatially differential effects, I find no evidence that this reallocation is associated with disproportionate impacts based on community characteristics.
Estimating the Missing Benefits of Water Quality by Nesting Recreation Demand and Hedonic Modeling with Sheila Olmstead, Daniel Phaneuf, Yusuke Kuwayama, Jiameng Zheng, and Dimitris Friesen
The recreation demand literature suggests that individuals value water quality at recreation sites even at significant distance from where they live. We take a more comprehensive approach to valuing water quality by incorporating recreational demand into a hedonic property framework and exploring three U.S. coastal regions with active housing markets, abundant aquatic recreation opportunities, and significant pollution challenges: Puget Sound, Long Island Sound, and the Texas Gulf Coast.
Disruptions in Global Waste Trade: A General Equilibrium Analysis of Policy Responses with Chi Ta and Rachel Wellhausen
While the global waste trade has grown significantly over the past few decades, it is likely to bring different welfare implications than the trade of most normal goods. We develop an analytical general equilibrium model to examine how importing countries respond to shocks in the global waste trade and mitigate the negative externalities associated with waste imports, as well as to understand the broader economic and environmental implications.
Toxic Pollution in Age of Climate Change: Investigating the Impacts of Natural Disasters on Industrial Emissions in Texas with Margarita Petrusevich