ESSAYS ON ISSUES IN PUBLIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS

This dissertation is composed of three applied economics essays about important topicsin public and environmental economics. The first is an analysis of the distributional effects of demand shocks or demand-shifting policies in the context of energy markets and climate policy. The second focuses on the use of remote monitoring technology and its effects on the provision of the local public good of public safety. The third analyzes the effect of imperfect real-world carbon pricing policies on carbon emissions. Chapter 1 studies the impact of declining coal demand on local labor markets in coal mining regions of the US. I separate the effect of a recent contraction in the coal industry from other factors driving economic trends in coal country by constructing an instrument for coal demand from producing counties. The instrument combines a regional model of coal plant dispatch with variation in the exposure of producing counties to demand shocks from the electricity sector. My estimates demonstrate that demand-driven declines in the value of coal produced eliminate jobs primarily in coal mining and adjacent industries, with the largest effects occurring in Appalachia and the West. I also estimate decreases in in-migration, home values, and expenditures on public education, and increases in poverty. Applied in a stylized spatial equilibrium model of location choice, my estimates imply an aggregate decline of $0.5-1 billion in the economic welfare of coal country residents resulting from a net decline of $3.7 billion in thermal coal production value from 2007- 2017. In Chapter 2, using a novel data set on CCTV cameras in Chandigarh, India, we test whether police officers’ effort changes in response to the presence of traffic cameras. Although the cameras are useful in sanctioning drivers, they can also capture the passive (shirking) or active (rent-seeking) corruption of officers. Accounting for the spatial and temporal variations in the operation of the cameras, we find