Three Essays On Environmental Economics And Human Behavior

The first essay of this dissertation uses a general equilibrium model of the U.S. economy to study the welfare implications of a biofuel blend mandate and consumption subsidy in the presence of pre-existing labor and fuel taxes. The tax interaction and revenue recycling effects are found to be significant relative to the overall costs of the policies and to previous partial equilibrium studies. I find empirically that the tax credit is welfare superior to the mandate for a given level of ethanol consumption, and this result is robust to the presence or absence of the labor tax. The second essay studies consumer behavior in durable goods markets. I extend a classic model of consumption with status-seeking preferences to incorporate a visible durable good stock with three attributes: quality, average item age, and stock size. "Newness" is an important feature of durable goods consumption, and I illustrate how the newness of a durable good stock, as captured by average item age, could be used as the status signal in a signaling equilibrium. I analyze Consumer Expenditure Survey data on the consumption of apparel goods which vary quasi-experimentally in visibility, and my empirical results suggest that newness and/or stock size may be used more than quality as a status signal, if consumers use apparel consumption to signal income. The third essay analyzes a model in which environmental regulation can potentially satisfy the "Porter hypothesis." I show theoretically how limited attention to waste production on the part of behaviorally-biased firm managers can result in internally sub-optimal production choices and the potential for "win-win" environmental regulation which increases net social benefits and also makes the firm itself better off