Joseph Shapiro

About

Joseph S. Shapiro is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His research primarily focuses on environmental economics, with a particular emphasis on the causes and consequences of environmental policies in the United States. He investigates topics such as safe drinking water, air pollution regulation, water pollution regulation, and the effects of environmental markets and trade policy on pollution and environmental justice. Shapiro's work often employs empirical methods and machine learning techniques to analyze environmental regulations and their impacts on public health, economic outcomes, and environmental quality. His research has been published in leading journals including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Review, Science, and the Journal of Political Economy. Through his extensive body of work, Shapiro contributes to understanding the effectiveness and efficiency of environmental policies, the role of institutions in shaping environmental outcomes, and the intersection of globalization and environmental regulation.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Natural resource economics
• Microeconomics
• Public economics
• Market economy
• Economics
• Environmental economics
• Business
• Engineering

Selected publications

• Energy Cost Pass-Through in US Manufacturing: Estimates and Implications for Carbon Taxes

  American Economic Journal Applied Economics · 2020 · 117 citations

  We study how changes in energy input costs for US manufacturers affect the relative welfare of manufacturing producers and consumers (i.e., incidence). We also develop a methodology to estimate the incidence of input taxes that accounts for incomplete pass-through, imperfect competition, and substitution among inputs. For the several industries we study, 70 percent of energy price-driven changes in input costs get passed through to consumers in the short to medium run. The share of the welfare c…

  PublisherDOI

• Globalization and the environment

  Handbook of international economics · 2022-01-01 · 92 citations

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Globalization and the Environment

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2021-05-01 · 47 citations

  reportOpen access

  How should international economic policy address climate change? Does trade cause deforestation and endangered species depletion? How does globalization affect air and water pollution? Do trade and investment create a race to the bottom in environmental policy? How important are environmental impacts of transporting goods? We review theory and empirical work linking international trade and the environment with a focus on recent work and methods. We discuss the literature linking trade to local a…

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• Pollution Trends and US Environmental Policy: Lessons from the Past Half Century

  Review of Environmental Economics and Policy · 2022-01-01 · 46 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This article proposes and evaluates four hypotheses about US pollution and environmental policy over the past half century. First, air and water pollution has declined substantially, although greenhouse gas emissions have not. Second, environmental policy explains a large share of these trends. Third, much of the regulation of air and drinking water pollution has benefits that exceed costs, although the evidence for surface water pollution regulation is less clear. Fourth, while the distribution…

  PublisherDOI

• Regulating Untaxable Externalities: Are Vehicle Air Pollution Standards Effective and Efficient?

  The Quarterly Journal of Economics · 2023 · 38 citations

  Abstract The world has 1.4 billion passenger vehicles. How should governments regulate their air pollution emissions? A Pigouvian tax is technologically infeasible. Most countries instead rely on exhaust standards that limit air pollution emissions per mile for new vehicles. We assess the effectiveness and efficiency of these standards, which are the centerpiece of U.S. Clean Air Act regulation of transportation, and counterfactual policies. We show that the air pollution emissions per mile of n…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Leakage from Environmental Regulation: Evidence from Used Vehicle Trade and Smog Check

  NSF · $426k · 2015–2020

• The Environmental Bias of Trade Policy

  NSF · $293k · 2019–2022

Frequent coauthors

• Reed Walker

  116 shared

• Olivier Deschênes

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  42 shared

• Sharat Ganapati

  Georgetown University

  40 shared

• David A. Keiser

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  37 shared

• Michael Greenstone

  University of Chicago

  30 shared

• Alan Barreca

  27 shared

• Karen Clay

  Carnegie Mellon University

  19 shared

• Paul A. David

  Stanford University

  13 shared

Awards & honors

• Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship
• Kiel Institute Excellence in Global Affairs Award
• Marshall Scholarship

Similar researchers at University of California, Berkeley

• Maximilian Auffhammerh-52
• Brian Wrighth-50
• Gordon Rausserh-42