UC San Diego

This dissertation is a collection of three essays on applied microeconomics. The first essay examines how local control over property tax revenues generated from large plants affects local jurisdictions' willingness to host such projects. We first demonstrate that property tax payments from plant openings lead to significant increases in local school budgets and that this change is valued by local residents as measured through home prices. We next show that as local jurisdictions become less able to raise and retain property tax revenue from large plants, the number of these plants within the jurisdiction falls significantly relative to nearby jurisdictions that did not experience such a change. These results suggest that increased property tax revenues are an important benefit of large plants and as a result, policies that affect local control over property taxation can have major unintended consequences for non-residential land use and local environmental quality.

In the second essay, I examine the effectiveness and equity of automatic driver’s license suspensions for nonpayment of criminal fines, a policy that is in place in more than 40 states and that affects millions of drivers annually. Using a unique natural experiment in Washington that first eliminated and then reinstated driver's license suspensions for traffic offense punishment noncompliance. I find that mandating suspensions caused large increases in compliance, fine-repayment, and total punishment with greater effects for lower-income individuals. I further show suggestive evidence that the policy causes declines in traffic accidents among low-income drivers suggesting that such laws are an effective, but highly regressive way to improve traffic safety.

In the third essay, I examine the effects of a major environmental litigation initiative, which led one-third of the US coal-fired power plant fleet to come under a consent decree. I show that legal settlements arising out of this initiative caused large decreases in plant pollution emissions, which further led to meaningful improvements in local air quality and decreases in local cardiovascular and respiratory mortality rates. I conclude by showing suggestive evidence that in regulated electricity markets average electricity retail price and utility revenues increased following a settlement suggesting that a large proportion of the overall costs were borne by ratepayers.