Douglas Wrenn, AEDE PhD recipient and Post-Doctoral Researcher for the department, was awarded the 27th annual Tiebout Prize at this year’s Western Regional Science Association’s (WRSA) annual meeting, which was held from February 24-27, 2013 in Santa Barbara, CA.
WRSA's prestigious annual prize, named in honor of economist and geographer Charles M. Tiebout, is awarded yearly to a graduate student who has written the best graduate student paper on a topic pertaining to regional science. Wrenn was chosen for his PhD dissertation work, “Time Is Money: An Empirical Examination of the Dynamic Effects of Regulatory Uncertainty on Residential Subdivision Development”. This research was conducted as part of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study and is supported by grants from the NSF Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) Program, NSF Water Sustainability and Climate Program and the James S. McDonnell Foundation.
Wrenn, who studies the interdependence of urbanization, public policy and ecosystem services, as well as the implications for policies that seek to promote long-run sustainability, has conducted a significant amount of research on land and housing markets to understand how micro-scale interactions between policy and individual decisions impact aggregate outcomes. In “Time Is Money" Wrenn aims to examine the impact of implicit costs on the decisions of land developers regarding the timing and intensity of residential subdivision development, as well as examine the influence of heterogeneous implicit cost on the spatial pattern of land development.
Wrenn has presented “Time is Money” at the AEDE Seminar Series, in addition to several other locations. At the WRSA annual meeting his paper was presented at a special session on land markets and development. Additionally, as an award for winning the Tiebout Prize, Wrenn’s paper will be printed in the prestigious international quarterly journal The Annals of Regional Science (published by Springer) following standard review procedures.
Founded in 1961, WRSA is an international multidisciplinary group of university scholars, government and private-sector practitioners dedicated to the scientific analysis of regions. WRSA is known around the world for the quality of its signature seminar-style invited paper sessions at the organization’s annual gathering. Each year, the meeting brings together close to 200 scholars working in regional science.
Ohio State maintains a strong presence in the field of regional science scholarship with PhD students winning the Tiebout Prize in 2001 and 2012, in addition to this year’s award won by Wrenn.
Image: Courtesy of Professor Mark Partridge
February 28, 2013