Three essays in energy, environmental and public economics

This work comprises three investigations in energy, environmental and public economics: (1) estimation of tax evasion and subsidy pass-through under the Solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC), (2) estimation of increased uptake of residential PV systems in response to the California Solar Initiative (CSI) cash rebate program, and (3) estimation of the increase in ambient ozone levels due to a cost-saving condensed work week program for state employees in Salt Lake City, Utah.;The first chapter hypothesizes that firms in the third party PV industry over-report prices in order to exploit tax benefits increasing in price under the ITC program. Using fixed-effects and nearest neighbor propensity score matching, I find that on average firms inflate reported prices by 8%, or ;The second chapter explores the role of the upfront cash rebate program for PV under the CSI. We find that a 10% increase in the rebate rate has a large positive effect on adoptions, increasing the uptake rate by 14% at the mean, and that overall 58% fewer installations would have occurred in the absence of the CSI rebate program. We calculate average abatement costs under the program to be between ;The final chapter explores the unintended air quality consequences of a condensed work week (CWW) policy for public employees in Utah's Salt Lake City metro area, moving employees to a 4-day work week. I find that the policy had the perverse effect of increasing levels of ambient ozone. The maximum daily ozone level on Fridays, the week day immediately affected by the program, increased by 3 ppb or 5% over pre-CWW levels.