Published papers in economics Byrne, D., L. Martin, and A. La Nauze, forthcoming. "An Experimental Study of Monthly Electricity Demand (In)elasticity." Byrne, D., L. Martin, and A. La Nauze (2018). "Tell Me Something I Don't Already Know: Informedness and the Impact of Information Programs." Review of Economics and Statistics. 100(3): 510-527. Reynolds, M., B. Sullivan, E. Hallstein, S. Matsumoto, S. Kelling, M. Merrifield, D. Fink, A. Johnston, W. Hochachka, N. Bruns, M. Reiter, S. Veloz, C. Hickey, N. Elliott, L. Martin, J. Fitzpatrick, P. Spraycar, G. Golet, C. McColl and S. Morrison (2017). "Dynamic Conservation for Migratory Species." Science Advances 3(8), Aug 23, 2017. Martin, L., S. Nataraj, and A. Harrison (2017). "In with the Big, Out with the Small: Removing Small-Scale Reservations in India." American Economic Review, 107(2): 354–386. Harrison, A., L. Martin, and S. Nataraj (2017). "Green Industrial Policy in Emerging Markets" Annual Review of Resource Economics, 9: 5.1-5.22. Harrison, A., L. Martin, and S. Nataraj (2012). "Learning Versus Stealing: How Important are Market-Share Reallocations to India's Productivity Growth?" World Bank Economic Review, 27(2), 202-228. "Price Discrimination, Search, and Negotiation in an Oligopoly: A Field Experiment in Retail Electricity" with David Byrne and Jia Sheen Nah. Revise and resubmit at the Quarterly Journal of Economics. SSRN December 2019 draft.
"The Margins of Response to Road Use Prices" with Sam Thornton. SSRN Nov 2017 draft.
"Negative spillovers of new technologies: The unequal burden of congestion created by AVs" with Zan Fairweather. SSRN July 2020 draft.
"When do Firms Go Green? Comparing Price Incentives with Command and Control Regulations in India" with Ann Harrison, Ben Hyman, and Shanthi Nataraj. NBER working paper. Command-and-control (CAC) environmental regulation is commonly believed to deliver environmental outcomes at very high cost. We study establishment-level responses in a large developing country to a set of centrally-imposed but locally-implemented CAC policies. We observe increased investments in abatement equipment and reduced coal use, especially in regions that previously had a poor record of compliance with local environmental regulations. We also document a previously under-discussed margin for protecting high-value areas in countries that are growing rapidly: deterred entry by high-polluting industries into regulated zones. We show that under the CAC policies compliance and productivity costs were borne exclusively by targeted industries and firms. In contrast, variation in coal prices unrelated to the regulation lead to reductions in coal use across all firms. Our estimated coal price elasticity suggests that a 15-30\% excise tax would be needed to generate reductions in coal consumption equivalent to those produced by these CAC policies. Papers temporarily on pause "I'm Sitting This One Out: What non-participants reveal about counterfactual emissions" with Kim Liu. In a voluntary emissions-reductions system, regulators must evaluate and sign off on firms' claims of what they would do absent credits. This paper uses the behavior of non-participants to ex-post evaluate these claims. We focus on carbon offset projects in industrial energy efficiency, co-generation, input substitution, and fuel switching that are supplied by firms in India to the international emissions trading market through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). We identify the firms involved in over 600 CDM projects in a comprehensive dataset of Indian manufacturing firms. We first look for signs of strategic selection into program participation. After controlling for firm size and industry, there is no evidence that applicants are more likely to have decreasing emissions trends pre-application. We then evaluate behavior ex-post. We find that participants indeed reduce emissions intensity relative to similar non-participant firms, but in a way that is moderated by a greater expansion of output. Looking across project types, the largest emission reductions come from projects that improve energy efficiency and export excess energy to the grid. Fuel switching and input blending projects are more questionable recipients of credits because non-participants engage in these activities at similar rates. "Credit Where Credit's Due? Local Development Co-Benefits of the CDM in India" with Priyanka Banerjee.
"When Giants Take Steps: The impact of conservation targets on China's largest energy-consuming firms," with Miao Liu.
"Energy efficiency gains from trade: greenhouse gas emissions and India's manufacturing sector" 2011-2012 JMP.
Older work (system dynamics, climate change adaptation) L. Martin, et al. (2007) "Gaming with a microworld of a local product chain in the Oder river basin, Lower Silesia, Poland.” Simulation & Gaming, special issue on Natural Resource Management. Volume 38 , Issue 2, pp. 211 – 232. Newman, J., L. Martin (2005). "A Poverty and Social Impact Analysis of the Cost of Pension Reform in Bolivia." World Bank, Washington DC. Newman, J., M. Velasco, L. Martin, A. Fantini (2003). "A System Dynamics Approach to Monitoring and Evaluation at the Country Level: An Application to the Evaluation of Malaria-Control Programs in Bolivia." Fifth Biennial World Bank Conference on Evaluation and Development Evaluating Development Effectiveness: Challenges and the Way Forward Washington, DC 15-16 July 2003. Freeman, P., L. Martin, R. Mechler, K. Warner with P. Hausman (2002). "Catastrophes and Development, Integrating Natural Catastrophes into Development Planning," Disaster Risk Management Working Paper Series No. 4. Washington DC, World Bank. |