Abstract: Utilizing a nearest-neighbor research design, I find that households exposed to green neighbors within 0.1 miles are 1.6 times more likely to make their homes green within a year than unexposed households. The exposure also increases the likelihood of multi-property owners certifying their faraway secondary properties green, emphasizing that information from neighbors, not neighborhood characteristics alone, drives the effect. While financial benefits including green home prices, electricity savings, and regulatory incentives strengthen peer effects, pro-environmental preferences do not. An information-cost-based discrete choice model explains the findings and suggests that incorporating peer effect metrics in subsidies may accelerate green home investments.

Abstract: Tighter regulations on consumer debt collectors, although intended to curb predatory practices, may disrupt industries to which such debts are owed. Using a paired-county stacked difference-in-differences design, we show that these regulations adversely affect hospitals. While hospital patient volume remains unchanged, their account receivables, liabilities, and profitability deteriorate, with stronger effects for ex-ante higher financial liability and debt collector density. Consequently, hospitals reduce capacity, employment, and care quality, and steer patients to high-cost procedures. Additionally, non-profit hospitals reduce charity care for uninsured patients. Overall, ignoring spillovers of consumer financial protection laws on non-financial sectors may overstate their benefits.