Jeremy D West

About

Jeremy West is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research focuses on environmental and resource economics, with particular attention to the economic impacts of pollution, energy efficiency, and water conservation policies. He has contributed to understanding socioeconomic disparities in pollution remediation, the effects of energy efficiency disclosures in housing markets, and the role of automated enforcement and social pressure in water conservation. West's work also explores the intersection of public health and economics, including studies on COVID-19 vaccination incentives and the economic consequences of school reopenings during the pandemic. His research employs empirical methods to analyze policy impacts on environmental quality, urbanization, and employment dynamics, contributing to both academic literature and policy discussions.

Research topics

• Finance
• Medicine
• Economics
• Business
• Public economics
• Virology
• Microeconomics
• Accounting
• Actuarial science
• Financial economics

Selected publications

• Effects of the Minimum Wage on Employment Dynamics

  The Journal of Human Resources · 2015-11-30 · 435 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The voluminous literature on minimum wages offers little consensus on the extent to which a wage floor impacts employment. We argue that the minimum wage will impact employment over time, through changes in growth rather than an immediate drop in relative employment levels. We show that commonly-used specifications in this literature, especially those that include state-specific time trends, will not accurately capture these effects. Using three separate state panels of administrative employment…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Conditional cash lotteries increase COVID-19 vaccination rates

  Journal of Health Economics · 2021 · 97 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Conditional cash lotteries (CCLs) provide people with opportunities to win monetary prizes only if they make specific behavioral changes. We conduct a case study of Ohio's Vax-A-Million initiative, the first CCL targeting COVID-19 vaccinations. Forming a synthetic control from other states, we find that Ohios incentive scheme increases the vaccinated share of state population by 1.5 percent (0.7 pp), costing sixty-eight dollars per person persuaded to vaccinate. We show this causes significant r…

  PublisherDOI

• Cash for Corollas: When Stimulus Reduces Spending

  American Economic Journal Applied Economics · 2017-06-28 · 48 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The 2009 Cash for Clunkers program aimed to stimulate consumer spending in the new automobile industry, which experienced disproportionate reductions in demand and employment during the Great Recession. Exploiting program eligibility criteria in a regression discontinuity design, we show more than half of the subsidies went to households who would have purchased during the two-month program anyway; the rest accelerated sales by no more than eight months. Moreover, the program's fuel efficiency r…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Vehicle miles (not) traveled: Fuel economy requirements, vehicle characteristics, and household driving

  Journal of Public Economics · 2016-10-19 · 45 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Mandatory Energy Efficiency Disclosure in Housing Markets

  American Economic Journal Economic Policy · 2022 · 39 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Mandatory disclosure policies are implemented broadly despite sparse evidence that they improve market outcomes. We study the effects of requiring home sellers to provide buyers with certified audits of residential energy efficiency. Using similar nearby homes as a comparison group, we find that this requirement increases price premiums for energy efficiency and encourages energy-saving investments. We additionally present evidence highlighting the market failure—incomplete information by both b…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Steven L. Puller

  Texas A&M University

  33 shared

• Jonathan Meer

  Texas A&M University

  31 shared

• Mark Hoekstra

  27 shared

• Qianping Ren

  University of California, Santa Cruz

  4 shared

• Robert W. Fairlie

  3 shared

• Adam Millard‐Ball

  3 shared

• Erica Myers

  University of Calgary

  2 shared

• Nazanin Rezaei

  University of California, Santa Cruz

  2 shared

Labs

• Economics Research GroupPI

Similar researchers at University of California, Santa Cruz

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