Catherine Wolfram
Biographic Data
| ID | 1456764 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Catherine Wolfram |
| GIVEN NAMES | Catherine |
| FAMILY NAME | Wolfram |
| SIGNATURE | WOLFRAM C |
| AFFILIATIONS | National Bureau of Economic Research |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8588-7354 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 179 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Carbon Border Adjustments, Climate Clubs, and Subsidy Races When Climate Policies Vary
Jurisdictions adopt climate policies that vary in terms of both ambition and policy approach, with some pricing carbon and others subsidizing clean production. We distinguish two types of policy spillovers from these diverse approaches. First, when countries have different levels of climate ambition, free-riders benefit at the expense of more committed countries. Second, when countries pursue different approaches, carbon-intensive producers withi…
Disbursing emergency relief through utilities: Evidence from Ghana
Air conditioning and global inequality
As global temperatures go up and incomes rise, air conditioner sales are poised to increase dramatically. Recent studies explore the potential economic and environmental impacts of this growth, but relatively little attention has been paid to the implications for inequality. In this paper we use household-level microdata from 16 countries to characterize empirically the relationship between climate, income, and residential air conditioning. We sh…
Does Household Electrification Supercharge Economic Development
In recent years, electrification has reemerged as a key priority in low-income countries, with a particular focus on electrifying households. Yet the microeconomic literature examining the impacts of electrifying households on economic development has produced a set of conflicting results. Does household electrification lead to measurable gains in living standards or not? Focusing on grid electrification, we discuss how the divergent conclusions …
Heat exposure and global air conditioning
Experimental Evidence on the Economics of Rural Electrification
We present results from an experiment that randomized the expansion of electric grid infrastructure in rural Kenya. Electricity distribution is a canonical example of a natural monopoly. Experimental variation in the number of connections, combined with administrative cost data, reveals considerable scale economies, as hypothesized. Randomized price offers indicate that demand for connections falls sharply with price. Among newly connected househ…
Do Energy Efficiency Investments Deliver? Evidence from the Weatherization Assistance Program
A growing number of policies and programs aim to increase investment in energy efficiency, because conventional wisdom suggests that people fail to take up these investments even though they have positive private returns and generate environmental benefits. Many explanations for this energy efficiency gap have been put forward, but there has been surprisingly little field testing of whether the conventional wisdom is correct. This article reports…
How Will Energy Demand Develop in the Developing World
Over the next 25 to 30 years, nearly all of the growth in energy demand, fossil fuel use, associated local pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions is forecast to come from the developing world. This paper argues that the world's poor and near-poor will play a major role in driving medium-run growth in energy consumption. As the world economy expands and poor households' incomes rise, they are likely to get connected to the electricity grid, gain …
Work Environment and OPT-out Rates at Motherhood across High-Education Career Paths
Observing a sample of Harvard alumnae in their late thirties, the authors study the relationship between workplace flexibility and the labor force participation of mothers. They first document a large variation in labor force participation rates across higher education fields. Mindful of the possibility of systematic patterns in the types of women who complete various graduate degrees, they use the rich information available for the sample, suppl…
Decomposing the Sources of Incumbency Advantage in the U. S. House
This paper develops a model of incumbency advantage that takes into account candidate quality, and then estimates the parameters of that model using panel data on the U.S. House from 1948 to 1990. Our approach allows us to go beyond the previous literature, which has focused primarily on measurement of incumbency advantage, to a decomposition of its sources. The primary explanation for the rising incumbency advantage appears to be the increasing …
Decomposing the Sources of Incumbency Advantage in the U. S. House
This paper develops a model of incumbency advantage that takes into account candidate quality, and then estimates the parameters of that model using panel data on the U.S. House from 1948 to 1990. Our approach allows us to go beyond the previous literature, which has focused primarily on measurement of incumbency advantage, to a decomposition of its sources. The primary explanation for the rising incumbency advantage appears to be the increasing …
Experimental Evidence on the Economics of Rural Electrification
We present results from an experiment that randomized the expansion of electric grid infrastructure in rural Kenya. Electricity distribution is a canonical example of a natural monopoly. Experimental variation in the number of connections, combined with administrative cost data, reveals considerable scale economies, as hypothesized. Randomized price offers indicate that demand for connections falls sharply with price. Among newly connected househ…
Air conditioning and global inequality
As global temperatures go up and incomes rise, air conditioner sales are poised to increase dramatically. Recent studies explore the potential economic and environmental impacts of this growth, but relatively little attention has been paid to the implications for inequality. In this paper we use household-level microdata from 16 countries to characterize empirically the relationship between climate, income, and residential air conditioning. We sh…
Work Environment and OPT-out Rates at Motherhood across High-Education Career Paths
Observing a sample of Harvard alumnae in their late thirties, the authors study the relationship between workplace flexibility and the labor force participation of mothers. They first document a large variation in labor force participation rates across higher education fields. Mindful of the possibility of systematic patterns in the types of women who complete various graduate degrees, they use the rich information available for the sample, suppl…
Does Household Electrification Supercharge Economic Development
In recent years, electrification has reemerged as a key priority in low-income countries, with a particular focus on electrifying households. Yet the microeconomic literature examining the impacts of electrifying households on economic development has produced a set of conflicting results. Does household electrification lead to measurable gains in living standards or not? Focusing on grid electrification, we discuss how the divergent conclusions …
Disbursing emergency relief through utilities: Evidence from Ghana
Heat exposure and global air conditioning
Decomposing the Sources of Incumbency Advantage in the U. S. House
This paper develops a model of incumbency advantage that takes into account candidate quality, and then estimates the parameters of that model using panel data on the U.S. House from 1948 to 1990. Our approach allows us to go beyond the previous literature, which has focused primarily on measurement of incumbency advantage, to a decomposition of its sources. The primary explanation for the rising incumbency advantage appears to be the increasing …
How Will Energy Demand Develop in the Developing World
Over the next 25 to 30 years, nearly all of the growth in energy demand, fossil fuel use, associated local pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions is forecast to come from the developing world. This paper argues that the world's poor and near-poor will play a major role in driving medium-run growth in energy consumption. As the world economy expands and poor households' incomes rise, they are likely to get connected to the electricity grid, gain …
Work Environment and OPT-out Rates at Motherhood across High-Education Career Paths
Observing a sample of Harvard alumnae in their late thirties, the authors study the relationship between workplace flexibility and the labor force participation of mothers. They first document a large variation in labor force participation rates across higher education fields. Mindful of the possibility of systematic patterns in the types of women who complete various graduate degrees, they use the rich information available for the sample, suppl…
Do Energy Efficiency Investments Deliver? Evidence from the Weatherization Assistance Program
A growing number of policies and programs aim to increase investment in energy efficiency, because conventional wisdom suggests that people fail to take up these investments even though they have positive private returns and generate environmental benefits. Many explanations for this energy efficiency gap have been put forward, but there has been surprisingly little field testing of whether the conventional wisdom is correct. This article reports…
Heat exposure and global air conditioning
Experimental Evidence on the Economics of Rural Electrification
We present results from an experiment that randomized the expansion of electric grid infrastructure in rural Kenya. Electricity distribution is a canonical example of a natural monopoly. Experimental variation in the number of connections, combined with administrative cost data, reveals considerable scale economies, as hypothesized. Randomized price offers indicate that demand for connections falls sharply with price. Among newly connected househ…
Does Household Electrification Supercharge Economic Development
In recent years, electrification has reemerged as a key priority in low-income countries, with a particular focus on electrifying households. Yet the microeconomic literature examining the impacts of electrifying households on economic development has produced a set of conflicting results. Does household electrification lead to measurable gains in living standards or not? Focusing on grid electrification, we discuss how the divergent conclusions …
Air conditioning and global inequality
As global temperatures go up and incomes rise, air conditioner sales are poised to increase dramatically. Recent studies explore the potential economic and environmental impacts of this growth, but relatively little attention has been paid to the implications for inequality. In this paper we use household-level microdata from 16 countries to characterize empirically the relationship between climate, income, and residential air conditioning. We sh…
Disbursing emergency relief through utilities: Evidence from Ghana
Carbon Border Adjustments, Climate Clubs, and Subsidy Races When Climate Policies Vary
Jurisdictions adopt climate policies that vary in terms of both ambition and policy approach, with some pricing carbon and others subsidizing clean production. We distinguish two types of policy spillovers from these diverse approaches. First, when countries have different levels of climate ambition, free-riders benefit at the expense of more committed countries. Second, when countries pursue different approaches, carbon-intensive producers withi…
Economics (9 works) · Electricity (5 works) · Energy and Environment Impacts (5 works) · Energy, Environment, and Transportation Policies (5 works) · Engineering (5 works) · Public economics (5 works) · Business (3 works) · Economic growth (3 works) · Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth (3 works) · Natural resource economics (3 works)