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 higher green home prices, electricity savings, and regulatory incentives strengthen the peer effect, pro-environmental household preferences do not. An information-cost-based discrete choice model explains the findings and suggests that aligning green subsidies with peer effects can accelerate green home investments.

Abstract: Tighter regulations on debt collections, though intended to protect consumers from predatory practices, may disrupt industries to which consumer debts are owed. Using a paired-county stacked difference-in-differences design, we show that hospitals in border counties of states tightening the regulations are adversely affected than those in border counties of neighboring states without such changes. Financial liabilities, bad debt write-offs, and borrowing costs of affected hospitals increase, whereas revenues and profitability fall. They respond by lowering employment, investment, and patient care. Moreover, they curtail charity care for uninsured patients, reducing access to healthcare for a population vulnerable to incurring medical debt.