主持人： 喻    洋 副教授 上海交通大学安泰经济与管理学院

时    间：  2026年 1月6日（周二）14:00-15:30

地    点:  上海交通大学徐汇校区安泰经济与管理学院A507

内容简介：Legal uncertainty arising from the permitting process may shape infrastructure development, but its magnitude and mechanisms are unclear. Using novel litigation data on environmental and land-use permits, I study this question in the context of renewable energy infrastructure. I find that litigation influences market entry through two pathways. Directly, a history of litigation deters renewable market entry by 4 percent at the mean entry rate through perceived risk, while legal precedent encourages entry by 9 percent by clarifying legal standards and reducing uncertainty. Indirectly, through regulatory agency responses, a history of litigation extends permit review timelines by 21 days on average and by 206 days following negative rulings, while legal precedent mitigates these delays. The informational clarity created by legal precedent generates non-rival, non-excludable spillovers, resembling a public good. Because developers bear private litigation costs while the benefits of clearer standards are shared market-wide, economic theory predicts under-investment in legal precedent. I develop a structural model to quantify permitting costs and assess the extent of this under-investment. The model estimates average permitting costs of $5.5 million, or 14 percent of expected project net profits. Counterfactual simulations show that a legal fee shifting scheme would increase market entry by 6.1 percent, compared to 3.4 percent from permitting cost reductions. Internalizing the externalities of legal precedent may accelerate renewable deployment more effectively than administrative reforms alone.

演讲人简介：Yifei Liu is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is an applied economist interested in empirical industrial organization as well as environmental and energy economics. She studies how policy, regulatory institutions, and market structure influence the energy sector broadly, with a particular focus on investment.