About

Dominic Parker is the Anderson-Bascom professor of applied economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research spans topics in environmental economics, economic development, and law and economics. Much of his work aims to understand the effects, both intended and unintended, of policies directed towards the environment and natural resources, with a particular focus on the role that markets and property rights play in regulating those effects.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Geography
• Economics
• Development economics
• Law
• Sociology
• Finance
• Computer Science
• History
• Geology
• Business
• Ecology
• Economic growth
• Demography
• Biology
• Environmental science
• Ethnology
• Natural resource economics
• Oceanography

Selected publications

• Option Value of Apex Predators: Evidence from a River Discontinuity

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-10-01

  reportOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Timing Is Everything: Labor Market Winners and Losers During Boom-Bust Cycles

  Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists · 2025-05-22 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Sectoral expansions and contractions cause labor reallocation out of declining industries and into booming industries. Which types of workers gain and lose from these transitions? Using linked employer-employee panel data from Brazil spanning boom-bust cycles in its oil sector, we compare oil entrants with closelymatched workers hired into other sectors in the same year. We find that entry timing interacts with worker skill in ways that have lasting effects. Only highly educated workers hired into oil at the onset of a boom reap persistent earnings premiums across the boom-bust cycle. For most later entrants, especially loweducation workers, the decision to enter the oil industry results in persistent unemployment and earnings penalties. We document mechanisms underlying this first-in, last-out pattern. Accumulated experience in professional occupations insulates high-education early entrants from downturns, while a boom in sector-specific training programs intensifies competition among later entrants. We discuss implications for energy transitions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Timing is Everything: Labor Market Winners and Losers during Boom-Bust Cycles *

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Option Value of Apex Predators: Evidence from a River Discontinuity

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Economic potential of wind and solar in American Indian communities

  Nature Energy · 2024-08-23 · 10 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The effects of mining on local poverty in developing countries: Evidence from Mali

  World Development · 2024-04-18 · 5 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• The Creation and Extent of America’s First Environmental Agencies

  Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists · 2024-11-19 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  Why do administrative agencies form and expand or shrink? We study America’s oldest environmental bureaucracies—US state wildlife agencies—from their inception during America’s age of wildlife extermination to their manifestation as modern administrative agencies to gain insight. We develop a framework in which demand for agencies depends positively on the costs private landowners would incur to coordinate and self-regulate against overharvest and on the state’s capacity to administer regulations. We test implications by examining the timing of state agency creation from 1870 through 1920, changes in the size of agency budgets since the mid-twentieth century, and the proportion of modern budgets spent on nongame species for which private control is least profitable. Estimates show that high levels of state capacity and private contracting costs, caused by small landholdings and weak rights against trespass, are associated with earlier and larger agencies with less focus on nongame.

  PublisherDOI

• The political economy of American Indian policy: introduction to a special issue

  Public Choice · 2024-01-16 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Renewable Energy on American Indian Land

  Research Square · 2023-10-10 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Culture, sovereignty, and the rule of law: lessons from Indian country

  Public Choice · 2023-01-17 · 8 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• K.T. Holman

  Georgetown University

  24 shared

• S.M. Martin

  Vanderbilt University Medical Center

  24 shared

• Michael D. Ward

  United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases

  23 shared

• Christopher Costello

  University of British Columbia

  17 shared

• Robert T. Deacon

  14 shared

• Terry L. Anderson

  Hoover Institution

  11 shared

• V. Kerry Smith

  RTI International

  8 shared

• Bryan Leonard

  University of Wyoming

  8 shared