Publications
"Last Resort Insurance: Wildfires and Regulation of a Crashing Insurance Market" [Working Paper] with Madeline Turland and Joakim Weill: Accepted at Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (JAERE)
- Abstract: An increasing number of people are denied home insurance coverage in the private market and must instead turn to state-sponsored plans known as “Insurers of Last Resort”. This paper examines how insurers of last resort interact with private markets. We present a simple model of insurance supply under adverse selection and regulation to examine the impacts of the California nonrenewal moratoriums, a regulation that forced insurers to supply insurance following devastating wildfires. We find that the moratoriums were ineffective at slowing the shift from the private market to the FAIR plan and likely accelerated the unraveling of the private market.
- Abstract: We estimate the effect of competition on incumbent firm pricing by using high-frequency price data and the precise geographic location for all gas stations in California. Using an event-study design, we find that the entry of a new station is associated with an immediate, persistent 2.7-cent decrease in prices at incumbent stores, which equates to a 7% reduction in estimated retail markups. In contrast, nearby exit results in precisely estimated null effects on prices. We do not find that observable differences in station characteristics explain the asymmetry. Rather, we find that selective exit from more competitive markets and less heavily-trafficked stations explains the null results for exit. We discuss the relevance of our estimates to current environmental policy related to the decarbonization of light-duty transportation and zoning and environmental restrictions on gasoline stations.
- Abstract: We present evidence that bill shocks cause residential electricity customers to invest in energy efficiency upgrades. Our identification strategy builds on the fact that prolonged extreme weather events, which raise electricity costs for many customers, fall within a single billing cycle for some customers but are split across two cycles for others. We find that “treated” households that are exposed to average sized bill shocks are 21 percent more likely to invest in energy efficiency than are “control” households. This result suggests that inattention may be a factor in residential energy investment decisions, and that utility companies may be able to exploit bill shocks to promote efficiency investments.
Working Papers
"Processing Power: the Effect of Data Centers on Wholesale Electricity Markets" [Working Paper] with Owen Kay and Robert Reaser
- Abstract: Artificial-intelligence-driven data centers are reversing two decades of flat U.S. electricity demand and have generated questions about how this growth will impact electricity prices. We quantify this effect using an hourly, unit-level least-cost dispatch model covering wholesale electricity markets in the continental United States. We find that existing data centers have already increased wholesale prices by 2 to 6\% on average nationwide, with substantially larger effects in regions hosting major data center corridors. Extending the model through 2028, we show that if proposed construction proceeds under high-utilization scenarios, wholesale prices could rise dramatically (50\%), while more moderate build-out yields smaller (20\%) but still meaningful effects. Impacts vary due to utilization and build-out assumptions. Finally, we use the model to address several policy discussions including optimal data center siting decisions and renewable build-out uncertainty.
- Abstract: We measure the distributional incidence of US motor-fuel tax holidays using transaction records from ∼13,200 gasoline stations linked to neighborhood income. The 2026 Iran War raised gasoline expenditure shares 2.9 times more in the lowest- than highest-income census tracts. Pre-shock exposure accounts for 89% of the gap while the residual heterogeneity widens rather than offsets it. State-level tax holiday lowered retail prices but offset the same fraction (28%) of the per-gallon burden across quintiles. A counterfactual federal holiday preserves this incidence. Per-gallon relief is burden-proportional as it attenuates the shock’s level without correcting its regressive income gradient.
- Abstract: Implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been causally linked to an increase in the rate of the population covered by health insurance through expansions of the Medicaid program and revisions to the private insurance markets. We add to the body of literature on unintended consequences of the ACA by establishing the causal impact of its implementation on automobile insurance claims. Automobile insurance overlaps significantly with health insurance in its coverage of medical costs, making it susceptible to changes in consumer interactions with the healthcare system. Our estimates identify a plausibly causal impact of the ACA on the frequency of automobile insurance claims. We find that these increases are restricted to the private market portion of the ACA, and is associated with an average 13.6% increase in bodily injury liability claim frequency, as well as smaller increases in Property Damage liability (10.6%) and Collision (7.1%) frequencies, while Medicaid expansions lead to a nearly equal reduction in claim frequencies. We find that the impact of the ACA is concentrated along the extensive margin, with no discernible effect of the ACA on average claim severities.
Works in Progress
Vertical Contracting in Retail Gasoline (with Jackson Dorsey and Jacob T. Bradt)
"The Value of Electricity Transmission in Reducing Renewable Generation Uncertainty" with Christopher Malloy
"The Short-Run Impacts of Grid-Scale Storage Entry in the Texas Electricity Market" with Robert Reaser
"BESS Response? Understanding Strategic Battery Bidding in the Texas Electricity Market" with Robert Reaser
