Current Projects:
"The Welfare Impacts of Removing the U.S. Ethanol Subsidy and Tariff" (with Harvey Lapan and GianCarlo Moschini)
"Are Costs of Environmental Regulations Additive: Evidence from Multi-Pollutant Firm"
"The Unintended Effects of the Clean Air Act on Toxic Pollution"
Published Papers or Working Papers by Topics:
"Welfare Impacts of Alternative Bioefuel and Energy Policies" (with Joseph Cooper, Harvey Lapan, and GianCarlo Moschini) American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 93:5(2011), 1235-1256. [Download][Slides]
"Assessing the Welfare Effects of US Biofuel Policies" (with Joseph Cooper, Harvey Lapan, and GianCarlo Moschini) AgBioForum, 13:4 (2010), 370-374. [Download]
"Economics of Biofuels: An Overview of Policies, Impacts and Prospects" (with Harvey Lapan and GianCarlo Moschini), May 2012, forthcoming in Bio-based and Applied Economics. [Download]
"Are Exporters More Envrionmentally Friendly than Non-Exporters? Theory and Evidence" (with Harvey Lapan and GianCarlo Moschini), October 2012, under review, Job Market Paper. [Download]
Abstract: This paper studies the firm-level relationship between decision to export and environmental performance. To guide the empirical work, we introduce environmental pollution and technology choice into a trade model with heterogeneous firms. The model predicts that a productive firm is more likely to adopt emission-saving technology and to export. Using facility-level criteria air emission data in the U.S. manufacturing industry, for a variety of pollutants, empirical tests are supportive of our two primary theoretical predictions. First, facility productivity is negatively correlated with emission intensity, measured by emissions per value of sales. Second, conditional on the estimated facility productivity and the facility¡¯s exposure to environmental regulation, exporters have lower emission per value of sales than non-exporters within the same industry.
Keywords: Clean Air Act, Export, Facility-Level Pollution, Heterogeneous Firms.
"Firm Structure, Environmental Regulation, and Manufacturing Activities," November 2012.
Abstract: This paper examines the role of firm structure in determining plant decisions of relocation and shutdown, with an emphasis on environmental regulations. Using plant-level data on the U.S. manufacturing industry over the period of 1990-2008, we find evidence that, in the presence of environmental pressures, plants belonging to multi-plant firms are more likely to shutdown rather than to relocate relative to those affiliated with single-plant firms, conditioning on plant attributes and industry characteristics. We also find that changes of plant ownership are positively related with the probability of plant relocation and plant closure. Furthermore, plants that export or are owned by foreign firms tend to be more likely to relocate but less likely to close.
Keywords: Clean Air Act Amendments, Multinationals, Multi-Plant Firms, Plant Closure
"The Effects of Exports on Facility Environmental Performance: Evidence from a Matching Approach" (with Hang Qian), June 2012.
Abstract: This paper revisits the hypothesis of the negative correlation between export decision and environmental performance using semi-parametric matching estimators. Using facility-level criteria air emission data in the U.S. manufacturing industry, we match exporting polluters with similar non-exporting polluters within the same industry. To remove any state-specific unobservables, we further restrict matched pairs to be from the same state. Empirical estimates from various matching estimators provide evidence supporting the environmental advantage of exporters relative to non-exporters.
Keywords: Criteria Air Emissions; Exports; Propensity Score Matching
"Induced Clean Technology Adoption and International Trade with Heterogeneous Firms," May 2012.
Abstract: In this paper I introduce an environmental externality and factor-biased technology adoption into a model of trade with heterogeneous firms.
The paper explores the impacts of exposure to trade and stringency of environmental policy, with an emphasis on an emission permit cap-and-trade framework, on the induced clean technology adoption and firm dynamics. The model predicts that a continuum of heterogeneous firms will be partitioned by technology choice and export status. I show that: (1) resource reallocations induced by a stringent environmental regulation have differential impacts on firm dynamics, depending upon whether the adopted clean technology is labor-biased or emission-biased; and (2) the exposure to trade driven by a reduction in trade variable cost has various effects on the relative factor rewards for different factor-biased technology types. Despite the factor-biased feature, the trade cost reduction has an unambiguously negative effect on the clean technology adoption. The implications of the trade cost reduction on productivity cutoffs are determined by the opposing effects of the clean technology adoption and the decision to trade.
Keywords: Cap-and-Trade, Factor Bias, Heterogeneous firms, Technology Adotpion