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Nicholas Ryan
Prof. Nicholas Ryan joined Yale University as a Cowles Foundation Fellow for 2014-15 and an assistant professor of economics from 2015 onwards. He has been a Prize Fellow in Economics at Harvard University from 2012-2014. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2012 and a B.A. in economics summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania. He previously worked as a research associate in the Capital Markets group at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, DC.
Prof. Ryan studies energy markets and environmental regulation in developing countries. Energy use enables high standards of living but rapid, energy-intensive growth has caused many environmental problems in turn. Prof. Ryan's research measures how energy use and pollution emissions respond to regulation and market incentives. His work includes empirical studies of the effect of power grid capacity on electricity prices, how firms make decisions about energy-efficiency, and how environmental regulation can be designed to best abate pollution at low social cost.
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Lighting Up Bihar: Electrification to Sustain Economic Growth
This project looks at incentivising consumers to pay for the electricity consumed by the area in Bihar. The intervention specifically links the duration of supply to the payment performance of a group against electricity supplied in the previous month. Through a randomised controlled experiment, the researchers measure that doing so improves payment behaviour and reduces the percentage of pilfered power consumption in Bihar. Also, an extension of this project was also undertaken which expands the study sample, at the request of the Bihar government, from a planned 4 districts to 8 districts (increasing the overall sample, while reducing the number of units sampled per district).
Is electrification in India fiscally sustainable?
In the first article in the Ideas@IPF2023 series, Barnwal and Ryan describe the completion of household electrification in India as a fiscal feat, notwithstanding the persistent losses recorded by electricity distribution companies. They outline the extent of government investments in and bailouts of discoms, losses of revenue and electricity subsidies over the last decades, and propose Direct Benefit Transfers for Electricity as a policy solution based on the preliminary results of a pilot study carried out in the agricultural sector in Rajasthan and Punjab.
Third-party environmental auditing
High levels of industrial pollution are a harmful by-product of growth. The Indian state of Gujarat is an industrial powerhouse with about 5% of the Indian population, but 9% of India’s registered manufacturing employment and 19% of output. This growth has been accompanied by a degradation of air and water quality.
Let Them Buy Light: The Welfare Benefits of Electricity for Rural Households and Enterprises
This project measured the welfare effects of increased access to electricity for rural households and micro-enterprises by letting them buy light. The research design experimentally offers off-grid, solar connections through a randomized - controlled trial and measures both the willingness to pay for connections and the welfare benefits of a connection once adopted, with special focus on the productivity and education effects that bear on economic growth. Findings inform the formulation of sensible rural electrification policies and inform implementation issues.
Clearing the air: The effects of transparency on plant pollution emissions
Of the 20 cities in the world with the worst fine particulate air pollution, 13 are in India. If good information on who pollutes is available, then traditional environmental regulation can bring down emissions somewhat, but regulators may lack the will or resources to penalise every polluter. What more can government due to contain such widespread damages? This project measuring the effect of information disclosure on emissions in a large-scale plant-level randomised controlled trial in India. In collaboration with the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board, it develops a star-rating programme that assigns plants to categories based on their recent air pollution emissions, which are either privately shared with the plant alone or publicly disclosed.
Star power: Rating industries in Maharashtra by emission levels
Maharashtra Pollution Control Board recently launched a programme to rate industries based on their emission levels – the first such initiative by a government regulator. An easy and accessible way to inform residents about industry emissions around where they live and work, Greenstone, Pande, Ryan and Sudarshan contend that the programme can infuse transparency and accountability into the system, and instil healthy competition among industries.
Building Environmental Regulation that Enables Growth
This project is linked to a broader research-policy collaboration with India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), and State Pollution Control Boards of Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu to design, implement and evaluate an emissions market for particulate matter (PM) emissions in India, a pollutant of serious concern.
Emissions Trading as an Environmental Innovation in India: Measuring the Policy Impact on Emissions and Abatement Costs
Growth in developing countries has improved living standards of millions, but has led to high pollution concentrations and serious public health damages. Market-based environmental regulation can reduce the costs of pollution reduction and thus transform the trade-off between environmental quality and growth.