Chad Syverson's research spans several topics, with a particular focus on the interactions of firm structure, market structure, and productivity. His work has been published in several top journals and has earned several National Science Foundation Awards, Olin Foundation Grants, and a Brookings Dissertation Fellowship. Syverson is an associate editor of the Rand Journal of Economics, an editorial board member of the B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research in the Productivity, Industrial Organization, Environmental and Energy Economics, and EFG Programs. He also serves on the board of the Chicago Census Research Data Center. Prior to these appointments, Syverson was a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and a mechanical engineer co-op for Loral Defense Systems and Unisys Corporation.

Abstract: Whether and to what extent environmental regulations influence the competitiveness of firms remains a hotly debated issue. Using detailed production data from tens of thousands of U.S. manufacturing plants drawn from Annual Survey of Manufactures, we estimate the effects of environmental regulations—captured by the Clean Air Act Amendments’ division of counties into pollutant-specific nonattainment and attainment categories—on manufacturing plants’ total factor productivity (TFP) levels. We find that among surviving polluting plants, a nonattainment designation is associated with a roughly 2.6 percent decline in TFP. The regulations governing ozone have particularly discernable effects on productivity, though effects are also seen among particulates and sulfur dioxide emitters. Carbon monoxide nonattainment, on the other hand, appears to increase measured TFP, though this appears to be concentrated among refineries. When we apply corrections for two likely sources of positive bias in these estimates (price mismeasurement and sample selection on survival), we estimate that the total TFP loss for polluting plants in nonattaining counties is 4.8 percent. This corresponds to an annual lost output in the manufacturing sector of roughly $14.7 billion in 1987 dollars ($24.4 billion in 2009 dollars).