Chen M., De Silva D., & Slechten A. (2026), "Director Appointments, Boardroom Networks, and Firm Environmental Performance", Environmental and Resource Economics, accepted
Schiller A., & Slechten A. (2025), "Effect of natural resource extraction on school performance: Evidence from Texas", Energy Economics, 144, pp. 1-21. Paper DOI:doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108308
De Silva D., Schiller A., Slechten A. & Wolk L. (2024), "Tiebout sorting and toxic releases", Environmental and Resource Economics, 87, pp. 2487–2520. Paper DOI: doi.org/10.1007/s10640-024-00893-8
Banerjee S., Homroy S. & A. Slechten (2022), "Stakeholder Preference and Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility", Journal of Corporate Finance, 77, 102286. Paper DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2022.102286
Cai J., De Silva D., & Slechten A. (2021), "Effects of Oil Booms on the Local Environment", Energy Economics, 101, pp. 1-12. Paper DOI: doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2021.105365
De Silva D., McComb R., Schiller A., & Slechten A. (2021), "Firm Behavior and Pollution in Small Geographies", European Economic Review, 136, pp. 1-33. Paper DOI: doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2021.103742
Slechten A. (2020), "Environmental agreements under asymmetric information", Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists , 7(3), 455-481. Paper DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/707653
Homroy S. & Slechten A. (2019),“Board Expertise, Networked Boards and Environmental Performance”, Journal of Business Ethics, 158 (1), 269-292. Paper DOI: 10.1007/s10551-017-3769-y
Cantillon E. & Slechten A. (2018), "Information aggregation in emissions markets with abatement", Annals of Economics and Statistics, 132, 53-79. Paper DOI: 10.15609/annaeconstat2009.132.0053
Slechten A. and Verardi V. (2016), "Measuring the impact of international agreements on global CO2 emissions", Land Economics, 92 (3), 534-554. Paper DOI: 10.3368/le.92.3.534
Slechten A. (2013), "Intertemporal links in cap-and-trade schemes", Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 66, 319-336. Paper DOI: 10.1016/j.jeem.2013.01.002
Estelle Cantillon and Aurélie Slechten, New Directions in Market Design (University of Chicago Press, 2024), chap. 2, https://www.nber.org/books-and-chapters/new-directions-market-design/market-design-environment.
“Who gains from market fragmentation? Evidence from the early stages of the EU Carbon market", with Estelle Cantillon (Online Appendix)
We document the impact of market fragmentation during the first phase of the EU emissions trading scheme on the terms that traders were able to get. We observe the universe of over-the-counter (OTC) and exchange transactions and the transaction prices associated with four of the 11 exchanges that were active during that period. We define a measure of price advantage based on the difference between the transaction price and the median market-wide price that day. We decompose price advantage into its exchange, counterparty and trader drivers and show that where traders traded and how connected they and their counterparties were with the rest of the market covary with the terms they were able to obtain. Such features are expected to characterize OTCt ransactions but not, typically, anonymous exchange transactions. The high level of market fragmentation during the first phase, which was a policy choice, hampered information aggregation about the overall balance between supply and demand in the market, and put small and non-energy compliance traders at a large disadvantage.
"Corporate Political Leanings and Environmental Performance", with Mingyuan Chen, Dakshina De Silva and Anita Schiller
This paper explores the link between corporate political ideology and environmental practices, using data on U.S. firms' political donations and toxic chemical waste management from 2000 to 2014. A firm's political leaning is determined by the share of contributions to the Republican Party or its candidates, while environmental performance is measured via facility-level data from the Toxics Release Inventory. The key finding is that firms contributing more to the Republican Party or candidates tend to release significantly more toxic chemicals into the environment. This relationship holds even when accounting for CEO and director ideologies, firm characteristics, and local voting patterns.
"Decomposing the pollution generation process: who is to blame?", with Barnabé Walheer
We propose a production-theoretic decomposition of long-run changes in emissions per worker that explicitly models the pollution-generation process. Building on frontier-based productivity decompositions, we separate emissions changes into efficiency change, technological change, labor productivity growth, and capital-labor ratio increases. Using a nonparametric production frontier, we apply the decomposition to 89 countries over 1960-2019. Counterfactual distribution analysis shows that technological change alone can replicate the observed cross-country distribution of emissions per worker in the final period, whereas output- and input-related factors cannot. At the country level, labor-productivity gains and the capital-labor ratio generally exerted upward pressure on emissions. Efficiency improvements played a secondary but still meaningful role, with many countries behaving as "followers" : improving efficiency relative to the frontier without necessarily shifting the frontier itself.
"Risk Management and Price Formation in the EU Carbon Market" (with Estelle Cantillon)
"Politics of Toxic Releases" (with Dakshina De Silva and Anita Schiller)
"Predictable Renewable Generation, Coal Displacement, and Energy Security: Evidence from Tidal Power in South Korea" (with Dakshina De Silva, Soon Cheul Lee, Inkoo Lee, and Anita Schiller)