[{"content":"I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Economics at University of California San Diego. I use applied microeconomics tools to answer environmental questions. Currently I am studying competition and consumer behavior in the EV charging market and the impacts of noise pollution on student performance.\nI am on the 2026/27 economics job market. You can find my job market paper here.\nEmail: jaarons[at]ucsd.edu\n","date":null,"permalink":"https://josh-aarons.github.io/","section":"","summary":"","title":""},{"content":"Download CV (PDF)\n","date":"17 April 2026","permalink":"https://josh-aarons.github.io/cv/","section":"","summary":"","title":"Curriculum Vitae"},{"content":"What’s Driving High Electric Vehicle Fast Charging Prices? (Job Market Paper) link\nAbstract: Electric vehicle fast charging is more costly than home charging, which could slow electric vehicle adoption and place higher costs on lower income households that cannot charge at home. I compile novel data on station quantities, prices, and marginal operating costs to shed light on price setting behavior across charging networks. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I show that contrary to standard theory, stations do not lower prices in response to nearby competitor entry. I estimate a model of heterogeneous consumer demand for fast charging and use the elasticities from the demand model to calculate the separate sets of social surplus maximizing prices. I show that charging prices include a large markup above what is necessary to recover fixed costs, and lowering prices to the efficient prices would increase social surplus by 7-10%. Contrary to most settings, the optimal linear and two-part tariff prices that recover fixed costs are nearly the same. In the presence of charging station capacity constraints, equating quantity demanded and supplied requires increasing efficient prices above the marginal operating costs. These results suggest that increasing competition can only reduce markups by half, and policy would need to address charging supply or inelastic consumer demand to further reduce markups.\nTakeoffs and Test Scores: The Impact of Noise Pollution on Standardized Test Performance link\nAbstract: Noise pollution is ubiquitous in urban life, but little is known about its effects on educational attainment. I estimate the causal effect of noise pollution on standardized test performance by isolating exogenous variation in aircraft noise pollution and implementing a value-added model to account for differences in student ability. I find a large negative impact on math test performance, but no impact on English Language Art test performance. Moving from a school at the 25th percentile of exposure to one at the 75th percentile is associated with a math test score reduction of 0.1 standard deviations, twice as large as the impact of missing 10 school days during the year. I find similar results using a second identification strategy that leverages changes in aircraft noise from the introduction of new flight paths. These findings suggest a potentially large value to investments in noise insulation for schools exposed to high levels of noise pollution.\n","date":"17 April 2026","permalink":"https://josh-aarons.github.io/research/","section":"","summary":"","title":"Research"},{"content":"Instructor #ECON 5: Introduction to Social Data Analytics - Summer 2025, Outstanding Graduate Teaching Scholar Award\n[Student Evaluations] [Syllabus]\nTeaching Assistant #ECON 281: Special Topics in Economics (environmental economics for Scripps Institution of Oceanography Master\u0026rsquo;s Students) · Fall 2026, Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023\n[Student Evaluations][Most Recent Discussion Syllabus]\nECON 131: Economics of the Environment · Fall 2022\n[Student Evaluations]\nECON 100B: Intermediate Microeconomics (producer theory; formerly 100C) · Spring 2026, Winter 2024, Spring 2023, Winter 2023\n[Student Evaluations]\nECON 100A: Intermediate Microeconomics (consumer and producer theory) · Winter 2026, Winter 2025\n[Student Evaluations]\nECON 5: Introduction to Social Data Analytics - Spring 2025\n[Student Evaluations]\nNote: all evaluations are ordered chronologically. Some courses had multiple lecture sessions, and the evaluations for these courses are separated by lecture session.\n","date":"17 April 2026","permalink":"https://josh-aarons.github.io/teaching/","section":"","summary":"","title":"Teaching"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://josh-aarons.github.io/categories/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Categories"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://josh-aarons.github.io/tags/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Tags"}]