research

Working Papers

Notification Timing and Behavioral Spillovers: Evidence from U.S. Drinking Water Violations
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Abstract Mandated information disclosure is intended to help households recognize and avoid environmental health risks, but its effects depend on whether warnings arrive on time and reach the people at risk. This paper studies the impact of public notification of acute microbial drinking water violations, which require notice within 24 hours. Using administrative records, I construct the first national measure of recorded notification timing and link it to weekly NielsenIQ bottled water sales for 2,283 U.S. counties from 2006 to 2019. Only about one-fifth of acute violations have a record of on-time notification; the remainder are delayed or have no recorded notification. Separating the recorded notification week from the broader violation window, I find that bottled water sales increase by an additional 31% in the week an on-time notice is recorded, but do not increase when delayed notices are recorded. I also find some evidence of costly information spillovers: bottled water sales rise in an unaffected county after timely notices affecting residents of its neighboring counties. Household purchase-location data provide no evidence that this response reflects affected residents shopping across county lines. Dynamic estimates are consistent with shared local media accelerating responses in adjacent counties, whereas nonadjacent counties show no systematic response even when sharing a local television market or strong social ties to the affected county. The findings show that the effectiveness of right-to-know regulation depends on timely implementation and clearly communicating the geographic scope of risk.


Federal Enforcement Retrenchment and Compliance under the Clean Water Act

Abstract Between 2007 and 2018, federal Clean Water Act enforcement actions fell by roughly half, and beginning in 2017 federal policy shifted toward compliance assistance and greater deference to states. This paper studies the role of federal oversight in environmental regulation under cooperative federalism. I examine whether states replaced the retreating federal backstop and how this shift affected compliance and water quality at major publicly owned wastewater treatment plants. The analysis combines plant-level inspections, enforcement actions, and discharge monitoring reports from ICIS-NPDES with ambient monitoring data from the Water Quality Portal and river network data from NHDPlus in a nationwide panel spanning 2006 to 2024. Identification leverages pre-determined variation in states' reliance on federal inspections before the policy shift. I find that the federal backstop was weak even before 2017, as most serious violations received no timely formal response. I find no clear evidence that states replaced the federal withdrawal, and no detectable change in the incidence of significant noncompliance. Downstream water quality shows suggestive evidence of higher ammonia and lower dissolved oxygen in high-reliance states. The paper contributes evidence on the deterrence value of the federal enforcement backstop beyond state-administered regulatory programs and builds a new nationwide panel of significant noncompliance and enforcement actions for major wastewater treatment plants from 2006 to 2024.


Work in Progress

Eco-Labels, Consumer Demand, and Water Quality: Evidence from Laundry Detergents

Abstract Chemicals in consumer products affect human health both directly and indirectly, with many pollutants entering water systems via wastewater treatment facilities. Laundry detergents are a major source of such chemical discharge due to their widespread use and direct pathway into wastewater systems. As public concern over environmental health grows, firms increasingly adopt voluntary eco-labels to differentiate products with safer chemical ingredients. One of the most prominent examples is the EPA's Safer Choice program, part of the agency's Pollution Prevention (P2) efforts. I investigate whether eco-labeling in the laundry detergent market leads to improvements in downstream water quality. I leverage temporal and spatial variation in the sales of detergents carrying the Safer Choice label across the United States, combined with data on effluent violations by Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTWs) under NPDES permits. In addition, I estimate households' willingness to pay for eco-labeled detergents to quantify the role of consumer demand in driving the adoption of safer products. This allows me to evaluate whether market-based mechanisms, operating through consumer preferences, can complement regulatory efforts in reducing environmentally harmful chemical exposure.