Research

I am an environmental economist, although I often use tools from public economics, development economics, and economic history to examine human responses to environmental change. I enjoy thinking about problems involving heterogenous treatment effects and differential exposure to common shocks.

Research in Progess

• If Not Now, Then When: Risk Perception, Actuarial Fairness, and the Price Elasticity of Demand for Disaster Insurance
  • Funding from the UC Davis Institute of the Environment
• Climate Migration and Unconditional Cash Transfers: Evidence from the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend (with Matt Reimer)
  • Funding from the North Pacific Research Board
• Resource Extraction, Electrification, and Rural Development in the American West (with Jeff Hadachek and Katrina Jessoe)
  • Funding from the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics
• Causes and Consequences of Permit Migration in Limited Entry Fisheries (with Tsugumi Yamashita and Matt Reimer)

Publications

• “Measuring Beachgoer Preferences for Avoiding Harmful Algal Blooms and Bacterial Warnings.” 2023. Ecological Economics, vol. 204(A). With Frank Lupi, Brent Sohngen, and Alan Xu. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107653

Other writing

• MS Thesis, 2021: Economic Damages of Water Quality Warnings at Great Lakes Beaches
  • Outstanding M.S. Thesis Award, Northeastern Agricultural & Resource Economics Association (NAREA)
  • Outstanding M.S. Thesis Award, Michigan State University AFRE
• “Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health,” Published in Climate Change and National Security: Can Public Policy Change the World? (The Aspen Institute and the University of Chicago). 2019. With Dean Arnold, Matthew Burnett, Kathleen Kirsch, and Charlotte Hough.

^{Old ranch house and windmill along Route 66 in northern Arizona, by Carol Highsmith (2018)}