His research is focused on estimating the costs and benefits of environmental quality. He has worked extensively on the Clean Air Act and examined its impacts on air quality, manufacturing activity, housing prices, and infant mortality to assess its costs and benefits. He is currently engaged in a large scale project to estimate the economic costs of climate change. Other current projects include examinations of: the benefits of the Superfund program; the economic and health impacts of indoor air pollution in Orissa, India; individual’s revealed value of a statistical life; the impact of air pollution on life expectancies in China; the efficacy of environmental regulations in India; and the costs and benefits of an emissions trading market in India.

Greenstone is also interested in the consequences of government regulation, more generally. He is conducting or has conducted research on: the effects of federal antidiscrimination laws on black infant mortality rates; the impacts of mandated disclosure laws on equity markets; and the welfare consequences of state and local subsidies given to businesses that locate within their jurisdictions.

He served as the chief economist for President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors in the first year of his administration. He also served as an editor of The Review of Economics and Statistics and as a member of the EPA Science Advisory Board’s Environmental Economics Advisory Committee. His research has been funded by the NSF, NIH, and EPA, as well as private foundations. In 2004, Professor Greenstone received the 12th Annual Kenneth J. Arrow Award for Best Paper in the Field of Health Economics.

Greenstone received a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University and a BA in economics with High Honors from Swarthmore College.