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Working Papers
The Role of Environmental Groups in Local Fracking Regulation (Job Market Paper)
Abstract
Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is often considered the most important innovation
in the energy system in the last five decades. Despite the growing economic literature
on the impacts of fracking-related to various outcomes, the literature has been largely
silent on the regulatory side of fracking. The discussion over fracking regulation is
further complicated by the lack of federal-level regulation, which has exempted fracking from environmental-related laws. This has allowed state and local governments
to regulate fracking activities with a high level of heterogeneity, which ranges from
passing a resolution (no actual consequences) to outright bans. Over our study period
(2009 to 2018), the number of such local-level regulations has increased: by our calculations, from just 12 in 2012 to 387 by 2018. We examine what drives local-level
fracking policies and the role of nonprofit environmental organizations in such regulations. We constructed a novel panel data set that contains the presence/absence of
fracking regulation in each community, relevant socioeconomic variables, activities of
environmental groups, and historical nearby shale gas and oil production. Following
a framework used in the local referenda literature, we develop a two-way fixed effects
model to estimate the effect of environmental groups on the likelihood of a community
adopting a fracking regulation. Our results show both the presence of environmental
groups and their expenditures increase the likelihood of communities adopting fracking
regulations. These results are robust to several sensitivity checks.
Temperature and Labor Productivity – Evidence from professional cricket
- In this paper, I estimate the causal relationship between productivity metrics in professional cricket and extreme temperature. Cricket being a summer sport in most countries, the use of cricket data provides a unique opportunity to study how extreme heat affects players’ productivity. Utilizing a novel player-match day panel dataset, which combines individual-level performance data from international cricket with high-resolution gridded climate data, I test if extreme weather indeed reduces productivity in professional cricket. This paper highlights the understudied effects of weather on high-skilled individuals in the ever-growing literature on economics of climate change.
Work in Progress
The Spillover effects of neighboring communities of fracking regulations
- In this work, I use a similar empirical approach to my JMP to examine whether there are spillover effects of local fracking regulations on gas drilling activities in nearby communities. Specifically, I estimate the impact of fracking regulations in neighboring communities on drilling activity in or near municipalities with no fracking regulations. The results suggest that as the number of regulations in neighboring communities increases, the drilling activity in and around a municipality decreases, suggesting evidence of spillover effects. The results also indicate that drilling activities increase outside the municipality boundaries in municipalities where environmental groups have a strong presence, suggesting energy companies may relocate from within a municipality to just outside due to environmental group pressure.
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