Center for Energy and the Economy working papers
Working papers offering insights on expanding and deepening our collective understanding energy markets and how they inform monetary policy and impact the U.S. economy.
Working Paper
Processing Power: The Effect of Data Centers on Wholesale Electricity Markets
Artificial-intelligence-driven data centers are reversing two decades of flat U.S. electricity demand and have generated questions about how this growth will impact electricity prices. This paper quantifies this effect using an hourly, unit-level least-cost dispatch model covering wholesale electricity markets in the continental United States.
March 20, 2026
Working Paper
Mean Group and Pooled Mixed-Frequency Estimators of Responses of Low-Frequency Variables to High-Frequency Shocks
This paper proposes mean group and pooled estimators of impulse responses based on mixed-frequency auxiliary distributed lag (DL), autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) or vector autoregressive distributed lag (VARDL) estimating equations.
February 17, 2026
Working Paper
Smooth Operator? Managing Electric Vehicle Integration in Constrained Distribution Networks
This paper examines the underappreciated challenges that electric vehicle (EV) adoption poses for the distribution grid.
December 22, 2025
Working Paper
Pollution Taxes and Clean Subsidies in an Open Economy
This paper shows that the same conditions that lead to pollution leakage enhance the efficacy of clean subsidies.
August 18, 2025
Working Paper
Time-Limited Subsidies: Optimal Taxation with Implications for Renewable Energy Subsidies
Pigouvian subsidies are efficient, but output subsidies with uncertain or limited durations are not Pigouvian. This paper shows that optimal “time-limited” policies must also subsidize investment to correct externalities generated after the output subsidy ends.
August 05, 2025
Working Paper
The Effects of Competition in the Retail Gasoline Industry
This paper estimates the effect of competition on incumbent firm pricing by using high frequency price data and the precise geographic location for all gas stations in California.
March 05, 2025
Working Paper
What Fuels the Volatility of Electricity Prices?
This paper uses emergency outages of coal generators as an exogenous source of variation in the power generation stack to study how changes in marginal fuel affect real-time prices. Contrary to anecdotal evidence, the authors find that wholesale prices are less volatile when natural gas is on the margin more often.
October 15, 2024
Working Paper
Do Bill Shocks Induce Energy Efficiency Investments?
This paper studies whether electricity bill shocks draw attention to the benefits of home energy efficiency investments.
September 20, 2024
Working Paper
Geopolitical Oil Price Risk and Economic Fluctuations
This paper provides the first systematic account of the quantitative importance of time-varying geopolitical risk to oil production for the global economy.
May 28, 2024
Working Paper
The Impact of the 2022 Oil Embargo and Price Cap on Russian Oil Prices
This paper documents the effect of the oil embargo and price cap on Russian oil exports in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
March 26, 2024