Alberto Salvo

Is Arbitrage Tying the Price of Ethanol to that of Gasoline? Evidence from the Uptake of Flexible-Fuel Technology

Brazil is the only sizable economy to date to have developed a home-grown ubiquitously-retailed alternative to fossil fuels in light road transportation: ethanol from sugar cane. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the uptake of flexible-fuel vehicles (FFVs) has been tremendous. Five years after their introduction, FFVs accounted for 90% of new car sales and 30% of the circulating car stock. We provide a stylized model of the sugar/ethanol industry which incorporates substitution by consumers, across ethanol and gasoline at the pump, and substitution by producers, across domestic regional and export markets for ethanol and sugar. We argue that the model stands up well to the empirical co-movement in prices at the pump in a panel of Brazilian states. The paper offers a case study of how agricultural and energy markets link up at the very micro level.

Severe Air Pollution and Labor Productivity: Evidence from Industrial Towns in China

We examine day-to-day fluctuations in worker-level output over 15 months for a panel of 98 manufacturing workers at a plant located in an industrial city in Hebei province, north China. Long-term workers earn piece-rate wages, with no base pay or minimum pay, for homogeneous tasks performed over fixed 8-hour shifts. Over the sample period, ambient fine-particle (PM2.5) mass concentrations measured at an outdoor air monitor located 2 km from the plant ranged between 10 and 773 micrograms per cubic meter (

How Do Households Discount Over Centuries? Evidence from Singapore's Private Housing Market

\mu

Reduced ultrafine particle levels in São Paulo’s atmosphere during shifts from gasoline to ethanol use

g/m

Abating Exposure to Diesel Exhaust in Developing Countries: Evidence from Sao Paulo

^{3}

Build it, but will they come? Evidence from consumer choice between gasoline and sugarcane ethanol

, 8-hour means), variation that is an order of magnitude larger than what is observed in the rich world today. We document large reductions in productivity, of the order of 15\%, over the first 200

Inferring Market Power Under the Threat of Entry: The Case of the Brazilian Cement Industry

\mu

Reduction in local ozone levels in urban São Paulo due to a shift from ethanol to gasoline use

g/m

Consumer Choice Between Gasoline and Sugarcane Ethanol

^{3}

Trade Flows in a Spatial Oligopoly: Gravity Fits Well, But What Does it Explain?

rise in PM2.5 concentrations. Starting at the sample minimum, the marginal effect of fine-particle pollution on output starts at about a 1\% drop per 10