About

I am an economist, and I study environmental and resource problems. My research focuses on understanding the distributional effects of regulations, property rights and institutions, as well as the political economy of environmental and natural resource policy. Applications include ambient air pollution, rights-based management of marine fisheries, and climate change.

Research topics

• Geography
• Ecology
• Biology
• Business
• Environmental science
• Environmental health
• Economic growth
• Natural resource economics
• Economics
• Demography
• Medicine

Selected publications

• The Impact of Air Pollution on Labor Supply in China

  Sustainability · 2023 · 17 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Environmental health
  • Business
  • Natural resource economics

  A growing body of literature demonstrates that air pollution has negative impacts on human health, cognitive ability, and labor productivity, but little is known about the effect of chronic air pollution on labor supply decisions. We use restricted-access individual-level panel data from the China Family Panel Survey (CFPS), paired with sub-district level remote-sensing estimates of air pollution, to evaluate the impact of chronic exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) on an individual’s hours worked. We exploit within-individual changes in air pollution, and fixed effects estimates indicate that an increase of 1 μg/m3 in PM2.5 reduces an individual’s average hours worked by about 14 min per week. We then leverage the city-level roll-out of air pollution monitoring and information provision to test hypotheses about the underlying mechanisms. We show that individuals with poor health respond to changes in PM2.5 the most. For individuals who are environmentally unaware, this effect is mostly through an impact of pollution on health, while individuals who are environmentally aware engage in avoidance behavior. Finally, the roll-out of monitoring and information provision at the city level plays an important role in raising awareness and individuals’ responsiveness to pollution.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Combining Remote Sensing and Cell Phone Users' Mobility Data to Monitor the Impact of Transportation on NO2 Concentrations in India

  Environmental Research Communications · 2022-12-01

  bookOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Estimating the extent to which transportation contributes to air pollution levels has been hampered by the difficulty in separating the relative degree of ambient NO 2 generated by transportation, power generation, and industrial activity—all of which play roles. This paper addresses this gap by isolating the impact of ground-level mobility on air pollution in India through a combination of remotely sensed tropospheric NO 2 measures and data from mobile-phone users’ locations. We construct vectors of ground-level movement of cell phones to estimate the impact of daily changes in mobility within a given district, controlling for both daily thermal electricity generation from upwind power plants and for trends in ambient pollution concentrations over time and space. We find that tropospheric NO 2 concentrations are very responsive to changes in mobility, and that the effect varies with population density. In the most densely-populated regions, our findings show that a 1% increase in mobility increases NO 2 concentrations by more than 2%, suggesting that traffic congestion plays a significant role in air pollution.

  PublisherDOI

• Grandfathering with Anticipation

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Impact of Air Pollution on Labor Supply in China

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Grandfathering with Anticipation

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2022-02-01 · 1 citations

  reportSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Wolves make roadways safer, generating large economic returns to predator conservation

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2021 · 81 citations

  • Ecology
  • Geography
  • Biology

  Recent studies uncover cascading ecological effects resulting from removing and reintroducing predators into a landscape, but little is known about effects on human lives and property. We quantify the effects of restoring wolf populations by evaluating their influence on deer-vehicle collisions (DVCs) in Wisconsin. We show that, for the average county, wolf entry reduced DVCs by 24%, yielding an economic benefit that is 63 times greater than the costs of verified wolf predation on livestock. Most of the reduction is due to a behavioral response of deer to wolves rather than through a deer population decline from wolf predation. This finding supports ecological research emphasizing the role of predators in creating a "landscape of fear." It suggests wolves control economic damages from overabundant deer in ways that human deer hunters cannot.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Discrimination in Ambient Air Pollution Monitoring?

  AEA Papers and Proceedings · 2019-05-01 · 82 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  In the United States, ambient air quality is regulated through National Ambient Air Quality standards (NAAQS). Enforcement of these standards is delegated to state and sub-state regulators who are also tasked with designing their own monitoring networks for ambient pollution. Past work has found evidence consistent with strategic behavior: local regulators strategically avoid pollution hotspots when siting monitors. This paper assesses whether income and race have historically played a role in monitor siting decisions.

  PublisherDOI

• On the dynamic instability of Arctic sea ice

  npj Climate and Atmospheric Science · 2019-07-11 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract The last few decades have seen a significant decline in Arctic sea ice, generating concerns about both its causes and its longer-term implications. In this paper, we introduce an empirical technique to examine the dynamics of Arctic sea ice extent. Using quantile autoregression, we find that the negative effect of atmospheric CO 2 is stronger in the upper tail of the ice distribution. We also document that Arctic sea ice dynamics have become more unstable over the last three decades, especially during the summer. The rising summer instability occurs across quantiles, indicating that it is due to the joint effects of rising atmospheric CO 2 and nonlinear feedbacks (and not due to outside shocks). While we do not find evidence of “critical slowing”, we see the increasing instability as a cause for concern. We also use the model to predict the evolution of Arctic sea ice extent under alternative CO 2 concentration scenarios.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Replication data for: Discrimination in Ambient Air Pollution Monitoring?

  ICPSR Data Holdings · 2019-01-01

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In the United States, ambient air quality is regulated through National Ambient Air Quality standards (NAAQS). Enforcement of these standards is delegated to state and sub-state regulators who are also tasked with designing their own monitoring networks for ambient pollution. Past work has found evidence consistent with strategic behavior: local regulators strategically avoid pollution hotspots when siting monitors. This paper assesses whether income and race have historically played a role in monitor siting decisions.

  PublisherDOI

• Electricity shortages and manufacturing productivity in Pakistan

  Energy Policy · 2019-07-02 · 72 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Charles D. Kolstad

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  9 shared

• Christopher Costello

  University of British Columbia

  8 shared

• Andrew Schreiber

  Environmental Protection Agency

  7 shared

• Jean‐Paul Chavas

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  5 shared

• Fan Zhang

  Chinese Academy of Sciences

  5 shared

• Ian Coxhead

  4 shared

• Mingxuan Fan

  National University of Singapore

  4 shared

• Fan Zhang

  3 shared

Education

• PhD, Economics

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  2010