Research
Working Papers
"Access to Alternatives: Increasing Rooftop Solar Adoption with Online Platforms" (New Draft Soon)
As of 2016, only 1.1% of U.S. rooftops had solar panels despite government subsidy support and falling hardware costs. In this paper, I estimate a structural model of the residential solar PV market using new detailed data on seller bids and consumer choices. The results illustrate that search/informational frictions are an important barrier to solar PV adoption for two reasons: (1) installers can charge higher markups and (2) consumers fail to connect with high-quality sellers in the market. Counterfactuals simulations show that solar PV adoption increases by 84% when buyers can solicit additional price quotes through an online platform.
"Waiting for the Courts: Effects of Policy Uncertainty on Pollution and Investment" (Accepted at Environmental & Resource Economics)
Legal challenges and transitions of political power cause the future of regulatory policies to be uncertain. In this article, I investigate how uncertainty about environmental policy affects investment and emissions at coal-fired power plants. I exploit a legal challenge to the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) that created variation in the probability that individual plants would need to comply with the new policy. I use a difference-in-differences approach to compare pollution reductions at power plants located in states subject to more uncertainty to plants in states that that were not. I find that plants with a lower probability of being regulated invested in fewer capital-intensive pollution controls and reduced pollution by 13% less on average. Many of these plants did switch to capital-intensive pollution controls after the court upheld CAIR. Policy uncertainty increased compliance costs by $124 million by delaying efficient investments.
In Progress
"Packing Power: Electricity Storage and Renewable Energy" with Andrew Butters and Gautam Gowrisankaran
"Who Pays at the Pump? Consumer Search in the Gasoline Market " with Ashley Langer and Shaun Mcrae