Research

This paper explores the relationship between market concentration and environmental performance, with a particular focus on the aftermath of mergers. Drawing from foundational economic principles, I hypothesize that increased market power, typically associated with reduced output relative to competitive market conditions, could similarly influence a firm's emissions profile, potentially lowering GHG emissions. This hypothesis introduces a complex tension between two pivotal policy objectives: the reduction of emissions and the preservation of competitive market structures. Novel empirical findings suggest that mergers exhibit a comparable positive impact on environmental indicators. This insight paves the way for a broader discussion on the dual objectives of companies in merger scenarios — increasing their market power versus achieving environmental efficiency. 

We study how climate transition risk shapes corporate bankruptcy. We construct a novel dataset linking U.S. bankruptcies to environmental violations, facility-level emissions, and satellite-derived vegetation health. We find that firms facing higher transition risk are more prone to distress and bankruptcy. By exploiting quasi-random judge assignment, we find that judges who are lenient toward carbon-intensive firms are more likely to approve reorganizations and grant greater debt relief. After bankruptcy, these firms increase emissions and degrade local vegetation, revealing a trade-off between financial restructuring and environmental quality. 

This paper examines how an increase in energy prices affects employment. Using the energy crisis of 2022 as a natural setting and detailed administrative UK firm-level data, we exploit variation in firms’ energy dependence by combining two measures of exposure: cross price elasticities between labor and energy, and energy cost shares. We estimate the heterogeneous impacts of rising energy costs on firms’ employment decisions. Our results show that higher energy prices led to modest job losses, with less than one percent of jobs in our sample lost over 2022 and 2023 due to increased energy costs. However, the impact was far from uniform. The contraction in employment is concentrated in energy intensive sectors such as Electricity and Gas, Water and Waste, and Transportation, and is particularly evident in rural and peripheral regions where labor markets are less flexible and alternative job opportunities are limited. We also find that mid-sized firms bear a disproportionate share of the employment adjustment compared to both small and very large firms. These findings show how energy price volatility can generate uneven effects across sectors, regions, and firm sizes, highlighting the importance of targeted policy responses such as energy price stabilisation and support for workforce mobility to help reduce adverse labor market impacts during periods of energy price shocks.