Mark Jacobsen is a professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University. Jacobsen’s research focuses on environmental regulation and taxes and addresses two main themes: the first is environmental regulation of transportation and the automobile industry. The second considers optimal environmental policy in the context of the broader economy.
Jacobsen’s work on transportation examines the impact of regulation to reduce gasoline use, including the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards and gasoline taxes. He has studied both the efficiency and distributional effects of these policies, examining empirically consumer purchase behavior, the response of automobile manufacturers to regulation, vehicle safety, and the used vehicle market. Jacobsen’s research on optimal policy choice applies to a much wider set of environmental policies and taxes. He considers policymakers’ choices in the context of the broader economy, showing how factors like Ricardian rents, untaxed activity in the informal sector, and the presence of green preferences can act to change the type of environmental policy that is most efficient.