Working Papers
Pollution, Population, and Production: A Structural Analysis of Wildfire Smoke and Spatial Sorting (with Christopher Knittel) (Link) (Job Market Paper)
Wildfires in the U.S. are increasing in frequency and severity, with California experiencing the most significant impacts. While much research focuses on direct damage and health effects, this study examines how wildfire and its smoke influence household migration and firm performance. Using temporal variation in wildfire and smoke exposure from 2011 to 2023, we combine household-level migration and demographic data with firm-level information on employment, revenue, and survival. Both hazards cause persistent population losses, with smoke exerting the larger impact: a one standard deviation increase in smoke exposure reduces household counts by 0.3–0.4 % over three years, while wildfire exposure lowers them by about 0.2 %. The decline is driven by older and family households, leading to younger, more renter-heavy neighborhoods and lower housing values. On average, households are willing to pay 3.2% of property value to avoid such smoke exposure, with willingness rising to 4% among those over 65. Smoke exposure also causes large and persistent contractions in business activity, reducing firm counts by about one percent per standard deviation, with smaller firms disproportionately affected. Our structural model highlights that older, older households drive local service demand—particularly in health and retail sectors—while education is least influenced by older households.
Disentangling Information Frictions and Endogenous Amenities in Residential Sorting Models: Evidence from Changes in Noise Pollution Exposure (Link)
This paper addresses two challenges to estimating the Marginal Willingness To Pay (MWTP) for residential exposure to noise pollution. First, ignoring information frictions among home buyers may bias estimates of the MWTP for an amenity. Second, changes in the amenity of interest may affect other endogenous amenities, further complicating the identification of MWTP. I address both challenges by using a novel instrumental variable based on spatial variation in the salience of noise pollution caused by hourly variation in flight paths due to wind direction. My preliminary results suggest disregarding information friction or endogenous amenities causes nontrivial biases in MWTP estimates. I find the MWTP to avoid 1 dB of noise pollution is approximately $4,742. I find that 80% of households exhibit a negative value of misinformation. The mean value of misinformation is -$118, with a total annualized value of -$2.2 million. Furthermore, households with a head of the family over 65 face significantly higher misinformation costs.
Valuing Noise Pollution in a Residential Sorting Model: Evidence from Changes to Flight Paths (Link)
Noise pollution from airplanes can reduce property values by creating a disamenity for residents. I estimate the effect of noise pollution on residential properties in the Phoenix metropolitan area, using quasi-random changes in commercial flight paths to and from Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. Then, I estimate the parameters of a residential sorting model with heterogeneous preferences over noise and other amenities. The identifying variation comes from the unexpected implementation of new flight paths and instruments for time-varying housing prices. I find that the average marginal willingness to pay to avoid noise pollution is $3,038 per dB (decibel) and varies from $2,500 to $3,500 per dB, based on household demographics. A Pigouvian tax on airplane passengers to compensate residents for noise pollution is approximately $16 per one-way flight, three times the carbon tax for a one-way trip from New York to San Francisco.
Capitalization of Noise Pollution and Environmental Justice: Evidence from Changes to Flight Paths (Link)
This paper analyzes how a quasi-random change in noise pollution was capitalized into housing prices in a major metropolitan area. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) modified arrival and departure routes around Phoenix Sky Harbor airport in September 2014 without notifying the public. The goal was to reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions. Overnight, noise increased dramatically in some neighborhoods and decreased dramatically in others. I leverage these unexpected changes in noise to identify parameters of hedonic property value models. The results imply that a 1 decibel increase in noise pollution reduced property values by about 1%. The total monetized value of capitalized noise externalities exceeded the value of fuel savings and reduced carbon emissions. I also examine the distributional impacts of the flight path changes by race, income, and other socioeconomic characteristics of residents. I find that the computer-generated flight paths initially benefited neighborhoods with more Black residents, but a court-ordered reversal left them worse off than before the first change.
Overhead Costs: The Impact of Airplane Noise on Academic Achievement (with Alexander Toy) [Awaiting Permission to Release]
Environmental noise is a pervasive and understudied input in the education production function, with potential implications for academic achievement and equity. This paper examines the impact of airport noise on student achievement by exploiting quasi-random changes in flight paths around Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. We assemble student-level English-Language Arts (ELA) and math test scores for grades 4–8 from 2012 to 2017 and link them to school-level measures of ambient noise exposure before and after the FAA’s 2015 route realignment. Using a difference-in-differences design we find that a 1 dB increase in average noise reduces both ELA and math performance 1.13% and 1.01% of a standard deviation respectively. These results inform policy debates on school siting, sound-proofing investments, and flight-path management to mitigate academic losses.
Work in Progress
Tariffs, Subsidies, and Critical Minerals: Shaping the Geography of U.S. Auto Production (with Luke Heeney and Christopher Knittel)
The U.S. auto industry is undergoing a pronounced reallocation of production: between 2015 and 2025, the Big Three’s domestic share fell from roughly 60% to 30%, while some competitors expanded U.S. output amid evolving tariffs, subsidy design (including IRA eligibility), and rising critical‑mineral prices. We study how these policy and input‑cost shifts shape firms’ production location and sourcing decisions, market prices, and the distribution of consumer welfare. We build a data‑grounded structural model that links consumer vehicle demand with firm production choices. On the production side, we introduce a novel framework that divides cost functions and estimates firm‑specific parameters, enabling rich heterogeneity in policy responses. Identification leverages policy variation—NAFTA→USMCA rules of origin and labor/steel–aluminum provisions, IRA incentives, tariff changes on vehicles and parts, and shocks to lithium, nickel, and cobalt prices. The model is estimated using model‑level sales at the ZIP‑code level matched to vehicle attributes, local demographics, and model‑specific domestic production shares, allowing us to recover preference heterogeneity and firm cost structure. We conduct counterfactuals to quantify short‑run impacts (holding domestic production fixed) and long‑run adjustments (allowing the domestic share to change via relocation or re‑sourcing). We report effects on vehicle prices, firm profits, production patterns, and consumer welfare—highlighting distributional consequences across consumer types and the trade‑offs between industrial‑policy goals (domestic production, supply‑chain resilience) and consumer costs.
Estimation of Electricity Access and Demand in the Republic of Yemen
The conflict in Yemen in 2019 significantly reduced access to reliable electricity. This study surveyed 1,052 Yemeni consumers to assess their electricity access and preferences for improvements. A stated choice experiment with randomized attributes was employed to estimate household Willingness to Pay (WTP) for various measures of electricity access, including consumption level and daily availability. The survey revealed that 82%, 18%, and 14% of households have access to electricity from solar, private grids, and national grids, respectively. Consumers are willing to pay $1.80 monthly for an additional hour of electricity availability. Moreover, they expressed a willingness to pay $6.50 for the capacity to power small, low-consuming appliances such as televisions, washing machines, and refrigerators and $16.60 for both low-consuming and high-consuming appliances, such as air conditioners or heaters. Further, consumers are willing to pay $13.40 to avoid losing access to electricity apart from the basic lighting and phone charging.
Others
"Specifications and Guidelines for Continuous Emissions Monitoring System (CEMS) for PM Measurement in Emissions Trading Scheme" published by Central Pollution Control Board, India (2013-14). Link
"Risk-Return Analysis of Sectorial Portfolio of Stock", Published at Economics, Management and Financial Markets (Addleton Academic Publishers, New York) (2012). Link