Research

Job Market Paper

Consumer Response to Drinking Water Quality Violations🔗

Abstract: I examine the impact of drinking water quality violations on local businesses and consumer behavior using a unique dataset of linked drinking water quality and cellphone location data. The data consist of nearly 2 billion visits to 45,051 business locations within 420 water systems across all 50 states from 2019–2023. Leveraging precise water system boundaries and daily visitation data in a Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood framework, I find that visits to restaurants and retail outlets decline by 3.2 and 9.1 percent, respectively, during the first week following public notification. This effect peaks in magnitude several days after the notification date, indicating a delay in information dissemination. I find these decreases are partially offset by increased visits to nearby, otherwise unaffected locations. Whereas previous studies have focused on avoidance behavior through bottled water sales and relied on outcomes aggregated to the week or longer, this is the first to capture within-week behavioral responses and quantify the resulting economic costs through changes in foot traffic. Back-of-the-envelope calculations imply roughly $184 million in annual forgone revenue at affected locations. The results from this paper highlight the need to invest in more resilient water infrastructure and suggest that current methods of public notification are not effective at spreading information in a timely manner.

Presentations: SEA Annual Meeting (2024), AERE Summer Conference (2024), Camp Resources Workshop (2023)

Awards: J. Fred and Wilma Holly Award for Excellence in Presented Research (2024); Southern Economic Association Graduate Student Award (2024)

Working Paper

Pricing and Market Dynamics of Public Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure

with Ben Leard and Beia Spiller

Abstract: We provide revealed-preference evidence on how electric vehicle (EV) drivers value public charging across station types and contexts. Using more than 84,000 transactions from 189 charging stations in the Southeastern United States between 2018 and 2024, we estimate the price elasticity of demand for public charging and the willingness-to- pay (WTP) for DC Fast charging relative to Level 2. Exploiting plausibly exogenous price changes, we find average station-level elasticities about −2. Using a conditional equilibrium framework, we estimate that drivers are willing to pay about $0.57 more per kWh for DC Fast charging, which implies a value of reduced charging time (VOT) of roughly $4.23 per hour. WTP is 28% higher for long-distance drivers than for local users, reflecting the greater importance of charging speed on longer trips. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests DC Fast stations provide an additional $970−$1,433 in annual private value relative to Level 2. These findings highlight the importance of consumer preferences for charging speed and suggest that subsidies and infrastructure policies should weigh not only installation costs but also the heterogeneous value drivers place on faster charging.

Presentations: University of Manchester Workshop on the Economics of Energy Transition (scheduled 2025), Camp Resources (2025), AERE Summer Conference (2025), SEA Annual Meeting (2024)

Work in Progress

Plugging Into Preferences: How Charging Infrastructure Drives EV Selection in the US

with Nafisa Lohawala and Beia Spiller

Presentations: Colorado University Environmental & Resource Economics Workshop (2024)

Published Technical Report

Pain at the (Electric Vehicle) Pump?🔗

with Beia Spiller and Banjamin Leard