
About Me
Welcome! I am a PhD Candidate in the Economics department at UC Santa Barbara specializing in energy economics, environmental economics, and law and economics. I will be joining the University of Oklahoma as an Assistant Professor of Economics in Fall 2023.
In my current work, I use applied empirical methods and causal inference to understand the effect of assigning liability for low probability, high severity events on firm precaution to prevent such events. To further this research agenda, I work with detailed administrative data on California’s electricity distribution infrastructure and tools from atmospheric science to develop a causal empirical framework relating a firm’s precaution to the level of liability it faces.
Research
- © Untitled. All rights reserved.
- Design: HTML5 UP
- Banner artwork provided courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington. Calame, Alexandre. An Ancient Pine Forest with a Mountain Stream. 1847.
Working Papers
with Olivier Deschênes and Gavin McDonald
Can the Low-Carbon Transition Energize Labor Markets? Evidence from Wind Electricity Investments in the U.S.
with Olivier Deschênes
Most western countries have made commitments or enacted policies aiming to transform their economies to become carbon-neutral by 2050. Many of the proposed policies to reduce carbon emissions are also promoted as engines of job creation and local economic development. While low-carbon transition policies continue to be debated and proposed, none have been implemented for a long enough period of time to permit an empirical evaluation of their impact.
This paper uses the natural experiment provided by the rapid deployment of wind electricity projects in the United States over the period 2000-2019 to shed light on whether the low-carbon transition can deliver long-lasting and high-quality jobs. We compile detailed data on the location and operation date of 55,000 wind turbines, combined with county-level data on employment and earnings to estimate the impact of wind projects on employment rates and earnings. Our research design uses two-way fixed effects regression, stacked difference in differences (Cengiz et al. 2019), and the doubly robust estimator proposed by Callaway and Sant’Anna (2021). The empirical analysis points to a small, but durable positive effect of wind electricity investments on local labor market outcomes. Overall, the results suggest that the deployment of 100 GW of wind electricity production capacity over the last two decades created close to 150,000 jobs.
Publications
"Equitable Low-Carbon Transition Pathways for California’s Oil Extraction", Nature Energy, 2023.
with Ranjit Deshmukh, Paige Weber, Olivier Deschênes, David Lea, Kyle Meng, Danae Hernandez Cortes, Tia Kordell, Ruiwen Lee, Tracey Mangin, Measrainsey Meng, Sandy Sum, Vincent Thivierge, and Anagha Uppal
Policy Work
PIs: Olivier Deschênes, Ranjit Deshmukh, David Lea, Kyle Meng, and Paige Weber
Contact Me
2015 North Hall, UC Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
cmalloy@ucsb.edu
Twitter: @cmalloy_econ